


The way of monsters

by Eloarei



Category: One Piece
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Beauty and the Beast Elements, Complete, Eventual Romance, M/M, Slow Build, Werewolves, romance light
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-09
Updated: 2019-04-15
Packaged: 2019-10-24 10:24:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 28,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17702591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eloarei/pseuds/Eloarei
Summary: Coby was used to monsters. After years under Alvida he thought he understood them. But escaping out into the world shows him that there's a lot he doesn't know. What makes a monster? And what redeems one?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this fic... i think about 2 years ago? And most of it has just been sitting here, waiting for me to finish it. It's not done yet, but I'm trying to make it my goal this month. So hopefully it'll get done soon, and in the meantime I'll start to post what I do have. 
> 
> Since summaries are no place for summaries, I guess, I'll mention here that the basic premise of this story kiiiind of follows a sort of Beauty and the Beast idea. Estimated total length? Mm... 20k? I've got about 15k done so far.  
> (EDIT: the fic is now complete! And as usual it considerably exceeded my original estimate.)

Coby was used to monsters. A mistake when he was still hardly out of childhood left him in the hands of monsters for several years. He'd only meant to go to the market, and he'd thought that was where the cart was headed. Not until they'd taken far too many twists and turns through an ever-darkening forest did he realize they'd strayed. Well,  _ he'd _ strayed. The cart went where it was probably always headed: the keep of Lady Alvida.

He didn't know how he could have made such a stupid mistake, and he didn't know that it mattered. The fact was that he was stuck in their service. Coby was a decent-enough tracker; he was fairly certain he'd have been able to find his way home, given time, but oh no, the Lady liked him far too much to let him leave. He stayed there in service to the woman for years.

Alvida was horrible. She was no gem, though she demanded every passing servant tell her she was the fairest in the land as she stuffed her face with tributes brought from nearby towns who'd been threatened into fealty. Coby hated every time he was forced to lie to her, to tell her with all swiftness how beautiful she was because she would lay him out if he hesitated. The woman had a mean right hook, especially for someone who looked so unfit, and Coby had been raised in too loving a family to take such a beating with aplomb. So he lied, he told her she was pretty, he scurried around behind her and made himself more useful than was probably smart. It still wasn't enough to avoid her mirthful ire, nor that of her bandits parading around in knights' armor, but it was the best he could do when the keep's gates were locked tight and the Lady Alvida kept such a close watch on him.

So Coby was used to monsters, after several years of this. That didn't mean he was prepared to meet another one.

He was helping sort through some new cartfuls of supplies that had been brought in (more 'tributes', likely), when they got quite a surprise. A pile of hay had brought a stowaway, who punched the soldier who tried to wake him-- so hard that the man went flying and cracked his head against a wall some yards away. His fellows left him there and ran screaming. Coby was frozen to the spot.

The stowaway yawned, seemingly unaware of what he'd done. Coby was torn between fear  _ of _ the young man, and fear  _ for _ him. The stowaway seemed to have frighteningly good reflexes, but no reflex could get him out from Alvida's clutches, and the Lady was sure to know he was here, as soon as her frightened soldiers found her.

“You've got to get out of here before they find you,” Coby told him in a sort of conspiratorial whisper.

However, it didn't seem that the stowaway (Luffy, he called himself) was remotely as frightened of the situation as Coby thought he ought to be. He hopped down from the hay cart and helped himself to some of the other tribute while he looked around, moderately unimpressed by his surroundings and Coby's fretting both.

Coby couldn't understand how anyone could be so nonchalant about waking up to find yourself in a strange and dangerous new place, but it became fairly clear when the Lady Alvida showed up in the hall as Coby was hesitantly trailing after Luffy on his casual exploration of the place. Luffy disposed of her entourage of soldiers right quick, punching the lot of them so hard they nearly left dents in the keep's stone walls. The Lady's face turned red as she watched her soldiers fall en mass, apoplectic with rage. She reared back for an attack of her own (and she was carrying a mace this time; her favored weapon. Coby had seen her dispatch more than a few enemy soldiers with it), but Luffy was too quick, too strong, and, above all, apparently a monster himself. He sent her flying straight through a stained-glass window with a punch like a shooting star, his arm outstretched so much longer than was normal that Coby knew he couldn't just be seeing things.

At his surprised gasp, Luffy turned around and grinned at him, resplendent among the rainbow shards still falling down around them, and that was when Coby knew that not all monsters were bad.

xXx

After Alvida had been defeated, her remaining soldiers were too stunned to stop Coby and Luffy from taking a cartful of supplies and a horse to draw it and putting the keep far behind them. A map hastily snatched on the way out told Coby that he could get home in just a few short hours. He was almost nauseous with anxiety, but chatting with Luffy kept him occupied enough not to lose his breakfast.

“How did you stretch your arm like that?” Coby asked as the horse trotted along down the bumpy dirt path.

“Ate a cursed fruit,” Luffy said with a shrug. “Turned me into a rubber-man.”

Coby laughed a little uneasily. “And it gave you powers like that? That doesn't sound much like a curse.”

“Well I can't swim in the ocean anymore,” the rubber-man explained, chuckling because he knew as well as Coby how unlikely that was to be a problem around here.

He should have found it strange, but the fact that he was traveling with a cursed man actually made Coby feel safer. Knowing what Luffy could do made the trip much less nerve-wracking than it might have otherwise been, and knowing that Alvida was out for the count gave Coby almost a feeling of invincibility.

It wasn't long before he was back home to his tiny village. He hopped out of the cart before the horse had even come to a full stop and ran to the front door of his thatch-roofed cottage, calling out for his parents. He didn't even have to open the door to realize something was wrong. The whole place looked empty. Though there were only a handful of houses in the small town, there was never a moment of daylight that didn't see at least one person or dog or chicken or goat running around in the little village square. Now, though, it was still. No murmur of voices, or barking or dogs, or bawking of chickens, or braying of goats. No racks of drying meats or hides, or smoking roasts, or piles of fresh-cut hay.

And inside, no parents. The place was dark and dusty, the musty smell of stale air. No fire had lit the hearth in some time. He looked around frantically for a few minutes, as if his parents might be hiding under the beds or in the cabinet, but there was no one.

Outside, Luffy was shuffling around the yard, hands in his pockets, poking things with the toe of his sandal. “Nobody's home?” he asked, when Coby emerged from the house looking lost.

“I don't know,” Coby said. He looked around the village again, but it didn't spring to life under his gaze. “I don't know. Where would they have all gone?”

They didn't wait but a moment for an answer; an old lady appeared from one of the homes toward the other end of the square. “If you're looking for the people who used to live in this village, they're long gone.”

Coby hurried over to her. “What happened?”

“The war, child,” she said. “The soldiers came and trampled their fields. Slaughtered their livestock. They were ruthless. Anyone who was living here has moved on to one of the larger cities. Everything in between has been ravaged by the fighting.”

Luffy cocked his head to the side. “How come you're still here?”

“Oh I get along fine on my own,” the old woman said. “I moved in here after the previous occupants left. The soldiers don't bother me.”

Finally Coby noticed that the lady's house was the only one that showed any signs of life, and the bundles of hanging herbs and little charms around the threshold hinted at why.

“Can you tell me where my parents went?” he asked of the lady who he was fairly sure now was a witch. This might have scared him before, but he doubted she was anywhere near as frightening as the things he'd had to deal with since he'd left his home.

She looked between the two of them. “You should go to Shells Town. I think you'll find what you need there.”

He thanked her and wasted no time getting back into the cart. As soon as Luffy was seated beside him and the map was open on his lap, they set off.

xXx

Shells Town was the largest city within several hours' ride, a bustling town of perhaps hundreds of homes and shops sitting at the foot of a tower that was at least as wide as Alvida's keep and four or five times as tall. Quite a few people were out and about when they arrived, but there was a dark aura pressing down on everything that Coby was pretty sure had nothing to do with the encroaching twilight.

“Kinda gloomy,” Luffy observed as they rode into the outskirts of the town.

Coby looked around and found he had to agree. “Yeah. Do you think my parents are around here somewhere?” He could see tents and hastily put-together shacks clustered here and there, likely holding refugees from towns too small to withstand the troops that were apparently marching all over the land.

Luffy shrugged. “That's what the old lady said, right?”

It was too late to go traipsing around through the camps looking for his parents, as much as Coby wanted to see them after three-or-so years. Instead they found an inn and decided to look in the morning.

They should have figured there weren't going to be any vacancies but they were still surprised when the innkeeper shook her head at them. “I'm sorry,” she said, sounding genuine but a little burnt out. “We've been full for months, what with all the refugees coming in. The best I could offer you is some floor space in the foyer.”

“Why are there so many refugees?” Coby asked. “Shouldn't the local lord be doing something to help?”

The innkeeper cast a glance around the room, as if expecting to find more than just downtrodden travelers. “Our lord... Lord Morgan cares nothing for the refugees, or for his people. We might not exist for all the attention he gives to us, but that he sends his hounds out to terrorize us on the occasion. His war with Goa is the reason so many are out of a home these days.”

Coby was aghast. “That's terrible,” he said. “Why do so many stay? Why do people keep coming here if it's that bad?”

He knew the answer, at least partly, before the woman even replied. “There's simply nowhere else to go. The nearest city is Goa, more than a week's walk from here, and they would never take their enemy's citizens. And... it wasn't always this bad. Lord Morgan was a reasonable man once. Shells used to be a beautiful town.”

“I'm sorry. That's horrible,” Coby said softly. “You don't think there's anyone that could help?”

She looked a little nervous, but the innkeeper nodded sideways. “There was a wandering knight that came through recently. He seemed interested in our problems. To be honest, I think he was a mercenary. That might not be the right way to handle our issues, but it doesn't matter now; he was taken to the keep and nobody has heard of him in a week.”

Luffy seemed more intrigued than he had yet. “Why'd they take him?” he asked.

“Lord Morgan's dogs were running loose, attacking the refugees. The hounds, they only come out at night and the refugees have nowhere to hide. I heard the knight killed several of the dogs before that  _ creature _ came and dragged him off to the keep.” She paused and gave them a watery hopeful smile. “But maybe that was just his plan for getting inside the keep. He'd wanted to go after Morgan after all.”

Coby wasn't sure he shared the woman's optimism, however faint. She hadn't described the 'creature', but if it was strong enough to drag a warrior off with it, the man was probably dead. Luffy, however, didn't seem to think so. As he and Coby settled into the floorspace the innkeeper offered them, Coby could see the gears ticking in the rubber-man's head.

“I'm going to look for that knight,” he told Coby, grinning. “If he's really a good guy, maybe I'll get him to join my crew.”

The first thought that crossed Coby's mind was to break it to Luffy that the knight couldn't possibly still be alive, but the young man was so enthusiastic (despite being huddled on the floor in a stuffy, crowded inn) that he couldn't bring himself to dash his hopes.  _ He _ was still holding out hope that he'd find his parents, after all, and that was looking increasingly less likely. Even if he couldn't find them, he just hoped they were safe.

Instead of being a realist, Coby played into Luffy's statement. “Crew?” he asked. “What kind of crew are you trying to gather?”

“A treasure hunting crew!” Luffy said, as if it were obvious. (It wasn't obvious in the slightest; Luffy hadn't shown any interest at all in treasure since they'd come together, and Alvida had plenty of it throughout the keep. Luffy hadn't so much as glanced at her displays of gems or golden statuettes.) He continued on in his explanation, making the statement even less plausible. “You've heard of One Piece, right?”

After a day like he'd had, Coby didn't think he had it in him to be that surprised anymore, but he still managed a small outburst. “One Piece?! Luffy, are you crazy? That's Gold Roger's infamous treasure! Nobody's found it in twenty years, and not for lack of looking. You're going to get yourself killed!”

“Eh,” Luffy said with a shrug, and Coby wasn't sure if it was a vote of confidence in his own survival ability, or a lack of concern over dying on that grand adventure of his.

_ 'Well,' _ he thought,  _ 'he is a monster. If anyone could do the impossible...' _

Luffy didn't seem to care that Coby was rearranging his whole world-view in his head to include cursed overpowered teenagers (he'd been just sitting on the periphery of Coby's mind until now, like he hadn't quite convinced himself Luffy was real). He launched into his admittedly rather simple plans for finding and recruiting the errant knight.

“Tomorrow night I'll climb over the gate and grab him and bring him back here.”

That caught Coby's attention and dragged him out of his pondering over the improbability of Luffy's existence. “What? No, Luffy, you can't go at night! Didn't you hear the innkeeper? That's when the dogs come out!” An expression crossed Luffy's face that implied he didn't think dogs were that scary, but he'd clearly forgotten the one that had carried the knight off with it. “And that creature, too! If you're not careful, you'll end up just like the knight!”

“Hmm.” Luffy mused over that for a moment, and then said, like it was the most natural suggestion, “Come with me then.”

All the breath left Coby's lungs as the idea hit him. “You're kidding, right?” He wasn't a fighter like Luffy. He didn't think he'd ever punched someone in his whole life.

“You don't  _ have _ to,” Luffy said with a shrug. “I'm still gonna go.”

Coby knew Luffy would. And after he knew that, it was only a moment before he knew  _ he _ would go as well. Because Luffy had saved his life from the clutches of Alvida, and he'd come with him here to this town even though he could clearly get by on his own, and so far Coby had done nothing to even attempt to repay him.

Besides, this town needed help. They needed a savior, and though Coby couldn't  _ be _ that person, he could  _ help _ that person. Between Luffy and the imprisoned knight (who  _ might _ still be alive), maybe they could bring down the corrupt lord that was raining terror down on his people, and maybe there was something Coby could do to assist them, even if it was only acting as a second pair of eyes during Luffy's rescue attempt.

“Okay, I'll go with you,” he said, trying to sound resolute. “Tomorrow afternoon. But for now, let's get some rest. It's been kind of a long day.”   
  
xXx  



	2. Chapter 2

The morning was grey and the sky looked constantly on the edge of rain, but that didn't stop either of the boys from getting out there and starting their day with more energy than most of the town's citizens. Coby was a morning person by both nature and circumstance, and Luffy was the sort that probably always had energy. They strolled out into the inn's courtyard and made breakfast out of the supplies they'd left in the cart, which, perhaps surprisingly, hadn't been stolen in the night (a testament to the moral character of the refugees, or maybe to how afraid they were to venture out at night.)

In the clear morning light they could see the town better, and the tower at the feet of which it laid. It didn't  _ look _ like a castle that housed a corrupt lord, but Coby supposed they'd find out before too long if looks were deceiving.

Morning was still near enough to night that they decided not to break in just yet, lest they find the place still overrun with hounds. Instead they wandered through the town, in the general direction of the keep, and asked around about the situation.

“The dogs didn't come out last night, thank God,” said one relieved refugee.

A shopkeeper nervously told them, “The last wave of Goa soldiers came and went over a week ago. I'm afraid they'll be back soon. They always cause a commotion when they come through the town, and no good seems to come of it.”

Still others hadn't the slightest clue what was going on around the town, and Coby empathized with them. These people had a lot happening just within their immediate personal lives, too much to expect them to keep up with town politics.

By the time they reached the edge of the keep, Coby's resolve had hardened even further from being so surrounded by the destitute townsfolk. Inside him was a growing thread of rage that the local government had done so little for these people. Leaders were supposed to be someone you could look to when problems arose, not someone whose mere name caused you to cower. The whole situation really wasn't fair.

It helped Coby's bravery that there were no guards posted outside the keep's gates, and no signs of anything that looked like a hound. (Mutts abound, but they looked as downtrodden as their refugee owners.) The problem now was the very mundane and not all that frightening issue of how to get through the large wrought-iron gate. He greatly preferred these problems of logic over problems that had to be solved through fighting.

As he was turning to Luffy to see if his friend had any suggestions, the young man grabbed his hand and gripped it very tight. He wasn't looking at Coby, though; instead his gaze was focused on the tall crenelated edge of the stone wall in front of which they stood. He glanced at Coby for only a moment, grinning, then said, “hold on!” (As if Coby could break the deathgrip Luffy had on him anyway.)

And then they were launched up in the air as Luffy used his free arm to grapple the top of the wall and sling them up-- and over. Coby tried to suppress a high-pitched scream, but to no avail. He was fairly sure he was going to die as he vaulted through the air, at least until he was caught around the middle by Luffy, who stuck the landing perfectly, rubber limbs absorbing shock that would break anybody else's bones.

Coby was let down swiftly by his grinning companion, who stood with his hand above his eyes, surveying the yard as Coby fell to the ground and worked through a minor panic attack. He knew he should have expected Luffy to utilize his peculiar talents, but it had still come as a shock to him. He wasn't sure if he'd ever get used to it (or if he'd have time; after all, it was entirely possible that they were both going to die here).

Luckily, the courtyard wasn't particularly scary, Coby found when he finally caught his breath and looked up. It was definitely overcast with the same gloomy feel as the rest of the town, without the liveliness of thousands of people to balance it. The plants had all grown out of control, with tall grasses and thorny ground-vines covering most of what had probably once been open space: cobbled courtyards and packed-dirt training grounds for the soldiers. The two of them picked their way carefully through the mess towards the tower some several-hundred yards inside the walls. Coby was horrified but less surprised than he expected when he tripped over several skeletons that were littered throughout the yard, half-hidden in the overgrowth. He tried to control his panic, and did what he thought was a pretty admirable job of it. (The skeletons weren't  _ all _ human, anyway; nearly as many were four-legged animals-- or bits and pieces of them, at least. He didn't look close enough to determine if they'd all been gnawed on, but a few showed definite signs of having been someone's meal at some point.)

With Luffy in the lead, they soon came to the edge of the keep's inner walls, the castle as dark and foreboding up close as it looked from a distance.

“Now how are we going to find the knight?” Coby asked, really hoping Luffy had some idea of what to do next.

Luffy shrugged. “Guess we'll just go in and look around.”

Frustration choked Coby for a good second before he was able to reply. “That's absurd! We can't just wander around inside. How are we even supposed to get in?”

“The door,” Luffy said, pushing lightly on the thick wooden door they found themselves in front of. It opened easily and quietly, its hinges  _ apparently _ the only thing that had been well taken care of around the place.

Coby scoffed (quite on accident in his surprise; he generally didn't make such scathing noises on purpose). “Okay, but we might not even need to go in this way. It's not as if the knight will be in the main hall. We should go around the side to find the--” Following Luffy, Coby let himself through the door and into the hall, where his breath fell heavily out of his lungs. “...---dungeon,” he whispered, his eyes trailing from the dark stone floor up probably twenty feet to where a man was hanging, chained to the wall.

Underneath the man, and scattered throughout the wide main hall, large dogs were huddled in sleeping piles, with bones and half-eaten corpses piled here and there between them. Coby could just about feel his spirit leaving him right then and there, he'd never been so mind-numbingly terrified.

In the quiet few moments before anything happened, with what little control over his thoughts he had, Coby observed the room they were now in. It was the main hall of the keep, the room where the lord would greet visitors, where much public business would be conducted, and possibly where feasts would be held, but it didn't seem it had served any of these purposes for a very long time. (Other than 'feasts', but...) The walls and floors, both stone, were scuffed and dusty and grungy, wherever they were not outright disgusting with rot and bloodstains. There was some wooden furniture here and there, but none of it was in any shape to be used anymore, all smashed to bits, clawed and chewed. Chief among them was what looked like it had once been the lord's throne, now only distinguishable from the rest by the scraps of velvet hanging off its ruined frame, and that it sat (off-center) on the slightly raised stone platform at the back of the room.

The only other item of note, aside from the massive  _ hounds _ heavily adorning the available space, was the man who hung from the heavy shackles on the wall to the left of the throne. (Another pair of shackles mirrored them on the right side, but those hung empty.)

If Coby was certain of one thing (other than his own fast-approaching death), it was that this man was exactly who Luffy was looking for. He had the look of a knight, but not of a soldier; informal, and somewhat slapdash, his meager armor rather pieced together over his plain white shirt and black trousers. Everything he wore was in bad condition, although it was fairly obvious that a good bit of the damage was recent, probably from the same fight that gave him the various gashes that covered him. He hadn't had a chance to clean up; the blood was still smeared across his clothes. He looked horrible.

But, he looked alive. He chest rose and fell, faintly chafing the chains' heavy links against each other. He cracked an eye open, having apparently heard them come in. (Coincidence?, Coby wondered, or senses to rival a horde of hounds?) However, the speed with which he noticed them was only marginally faster than the snoring animals, who began to perk up a few seconds later.

Coby was still frozen to the spot, but Luffy didn't seem nearly as fazed by the horrific situation they'd found themselves in. “Whew!” he said, at a volume which might have been considered an inside voice but sure as hell wasn't a 'sneaking' voice. “Look at all these dogs. They're massive!”

Everything after that was a blur, it happened so fast, and very much without Coby's input whatsoever.

Tens of huge dogs stood from their sleepy piles, suddenly entirely awake, and within seconds were lunging at the two of them. Coby could only squeak, a very bad plea for safety in any situation, and probably counterproductive in the face of vicious predators, but he was saved again by Luffy, who swatted the hounds away as if they were flies. He punched and kicked some, and flung others against the stone walls. One he grabbed and used rather mercilessly as a hammer, rearing back and bashing it against the knight's chains where they were screwed into the stone. The man's left arm came free, and with his newfound momentum he swung himself hard enough to wrench the right chain out of the wall as well. He dropped to the ground like a stone, but recovered quickly, and soon joined Luffy in fending off the hounds.

“Wanna help us take down the lord here?” Luffy asked, shouting over the dogs' snarling.

The knight grinned, more vicious than Luffy but roughly as excited. “Sure, but I can't do much without my swords,” he said, even as he whacked a couple dogs in the face with the lengths of chain still attached to his wrists.

“Where is it? Let's go get it.”

Coby never heard the knight's answer, because a monstrous howling snarl covered whatever he might have been saying. The humans looked up in surprise, following the line of sight of the hounds, who'd all glanced back to the far end of the hall, twitching their tails like puppies (an action really incongruous with their dripping fangs). Emerging from the shadows of a hallway, there stood a terrible thing that could only be the  _ creature _ from the innkeeper's tale.

While the last minute and a half had been slow enough a blur that Coby could more-or-less remember it, the next part was far less coherent in his mind. All he could recall was the creature rushing up to tear ferociously at the intruders, a pale streak against the darkness that knocked the three of them off their feet.

Actually, the ensuing loss of consciousness was probably the main reason why Coby didn't remember much after that.

xXx

When he woke, Coby was less comfortable than he could pretty much ever remember being, with the exception of when he'd been actively receiving abuse from Alvida. At least she'd usually let him go back to his little cot when she was done smacking him around. Right now, he was laying on a hard, cold stone floor, aching all over. He wondered what had Lady Alvida in such a foul mood that she'd have knocked him out when she'd always been careful not to cause any lasting damage before.

And then he remembered that his life had gone from strange and frightening, to adventurous and hopeful, and ended up back in a downright nightmare. The last thing he recalled was-- he shivered-- a monster like nothing he'd ever seen before, rushing at him with murderous intent. It was a wonder he wasn't dead.

Groaning, he sat up and tried to look around. His glasses were missing, but he could still make out most of the important details of his situation.

First of all, it was dark. A faint flickering light could be seen, as if from a candle or a slightly distant torch. It was also cold; not freezing, just chilled. And damp, too. He'd guess he was underground.

Second, he was in a cage. Or, more accurately, a cell. Three of his four walls were stone, while the last was made of vertical iron bars. Pretty standard dungeon design; Alvida had had one like this too. Coby had had to clean it out periodically, so he was moderately familiar with such a place.

Thirdly, he was alone. Luffy and that knight-- where were they? They weren't in the cell with him, and he hadn't seen them get away. Then again, he hadn't seen really anything after the creature had knocked him to the ground. Coby just hoped they hadn't been eaten. Even before their leader had come, the hounds had seemed set on having them for dinner, and if the evidence (the many skeletons he'd seen on the way in) was to be believed, they had a good chance of it.

As much as his body protested, he pulled himself to his feet and went to the edge of the cell to get a better look. Hands wrapped around the cold bars, he leaned out as far as he could to see if there was any way to escape. With the dim light and his glasses missing, he didn't notice the person sitting just outside the cell until they turned their head towards him.

“So you're awake now, huh?” the man said, in a voice that was both lilting and gruff. He turned more so that the light caught on his features better, and Coby could see that the faint light reflected off shaggy blonde hair, messily framing a pale, tired-looking face.

“Who are you?” Coby asked, and the man laughed.

“I  _ own _ this place,” he said, droopy light-colored eyes narrowing. “Who are  _ you? _ A hunter? An usurper? A Goa assassin?”

Coby ignored the man's accusations as if he hadn't heard them, too hung up on his answer. “You own the castle? So you're the lord of this town?” He didn't especially doubt it, but he was a little surprised; despite the man's weary and worn look, he didn't seem to be very old, maybe in his late 20's at the oldest.

“Well, no, not  _ me _ ,” the young man said, with an expression a bit like a pout. “My father, Morgan, is the lord. But I'm still in charge here, so don't think I'll let you off easy.”

“Let me off?” Coby asked. “What for? I didn't really do anything.”

The lord's son scoffed (and Coby was fairly sure it was a purposeful one; it felt quite scathing, and self-justified). “I know you and your friends were here to overthrow us. Those two were lucky enough to escape, but let's hope for their sake they're smart enough to stay away. I might have been caught off guard this time, but I won't make it so easy next time.”

The first thought that crossed Coby's mind was relief that Luffy and the knight had escaped. He sighed, glad to hear it. The second thought was to deny that he and Luffy had planned anything with the knight, because heaven knew they really hadn't had much of a plan at all. But even if it hadn't been quite the orchestrated plot the lord's son was thinking, the end goal had been about the same, and Coby didn't feel remotely sorry about it.

“Don't you care that your people are struggling?” he asked, honestly perplexed that any lord (or his son) could be so callous about their subjects. “How did it get like this? With the dogs running loose, and-- and that  _ creature _ out there, killing people! Isn't your family sworn to protect the citizens?”

The son's expression shifted from one of mild annoyance (almost amused, really), to one of hatred, pure and seething. His breath came harsh as he growled, “What would you know?!” and stormed out into the hall.   


Coby was a little shocked at the man's sudden change in demeanor, but he supposed anyone who allowed something like this to go on for so long couldn't be a very good person anyway. Still, he wished he could have gotten some clarity before the man stormed off.

With nothing better to do, he returned to the cold, hard corner he'd woken up in and curled up there to wait for whatever came next.

xXx

What came next, somewhat predictably, was the return of the lord's son. It was several hours later, or maybe as much as a day; Coby couldn't tell, without any natural light to go by. The torch had guttered out some time ago, and he was hungry, but neither of those things denoted that a specific amount of time had passed. The son lit several torches on his way down the stairway and into the small dungeon, nearly blinding Coby but effectively rousing him from the sensory-deprived nap he'd fallen into.

“Here, dinner,” the man said, casually tossing Coby half a loaf of bread and an apple. (He caught the apple; the bread fell a little short of him, being lighter.)

“Thank you,” Coby said, rather more sincerely than the other man had expected, going by the sheepish and slightly-disgusted look on his face.

“Tch. Well, I can't have you dying until your friends come to try to rescue you.”

Sound enough logic, Coby supposed, but he still appreciated the food, even if it came with a less than pleasant excuse. He took a bite of the bread. It was a little stale, but still quite edible, and all the more delicious for being nearly all he had. Still, he wasn't really keen on this being his new life from now on. “I don't think they'll come for me,” he told the man, partly because he thought it  _ might _ be true, and partly because he hoped it would make the lord's son realize it was pointless to keep him there and... maybe let him go? (That was a bit of Luffy-like optimism, but it was really all he had to work with.)

“What? Of course they will.” The son looked genuinely confused by Coby's suggestion.

“I'm not so sure about that,” Coby said between bites of his apple. “I didn't really know them all that well.”

The lord's son seemed to be rearranging things in his head. “But, you came to rescue Zoro anyway. Surely he'll do the same for you.”

“Probably not,” Coby said, though he couldn't decide if he believed it or not. (After all, he really didn't know Luffy very well, and he didn't know Zoro (if that was what the knight's name was) at all. They might just go and get on with their lives.) He explained further, since his captor seemed to think the idea was absurd. “We only came to find the knight because the townsfolk said he was the only one who might be able to help. I'm not a fighter; I don't have any useful skills, so there's no reason for them to come for me, especially now that they've seen how bad this place is.”

Surprisingly, the lord's son didn't seem to take offense at Coby's vague insult over the state of his castle. He seemed sort of lost in thought instead. “Really,” he said, a half-question aimed off into the middle-distance. “That's... that would be smart of them.” He turned back to Coby. “So you don't think they'll return after all?”

That wasn't what Coby had said; he actually thought they  _ might _ return, if only to finish what they started, but he didn't need to tell that to his rather mysterious jailer. So he changed the subject, and hoped it didn't sound like he was avoiding the question. “What are you planning on doing with me?”

The son frowned almost comically deep and turned slightly away again. His droopy eyes were a little wider and seemed to be searching for something invisible in the dark stone of the wall. It looked a few times as if he was going to give some sort of answer, but after a minute he just turned and left the room again with a huff.

Disappointed in the lack of progress, Coby sighed. He set down his leftover piece of bread and half-apple in the cleanest spot of floor he could find, and then returned to napping.


	3. Chapter 3

The trend continued for several... well, Coby wasn't sure. Several cycles of however long it was between the lord's son's visits. Maybe it had been days, maybe it had been weeks. He didn't know. All he knew was that he was starting to forget what the sun looked like, and starting to wonder if maybe he hadn't just dreamed up the whole situation with Luffy and the knight.

His captor spoke briefly with him whenever he came around, usually some variation on his original accusation about Coby trying to overthrow his family, and he did a practiced job of skirting the issue whenever Coby asked how in the world the situation in the castle had gotten so bad. At least they did finally introduce themselves.

“I know you didn't ask, but my name's Coby,” he said, as the lord's son was making to leave the room after his fourth or fifth visit. If he was going to potentially rot away down in that dungeon, he wanted at least for his captor to have a name to put to the corpse.

“Oh,” the man replied, faint surprise layering over his tired face. “Mine's Helmeppo.”

He didn't stay to talk any longer, didn't even say “nice to meet you” before he left, but Coby was glad they'd gotten that out of the way.

Helmeppo seemed increasingly agitated as the days went by, apparently upset that nobody had come to rescue Coby yet. “Your friends sure are taking their damn time,” he grouched, raising an eyebrow at Coby like  _ he _ would know why they hadn't shown up.

He had his theories, and chief among them (besides 'they skipped town') was that Zoro was recovering from his wounds before they stormed the place. (And hopefully gathering more people. The two of them were certainly quite monstrously strong, from what Coby had seen, but that creature...)

He asked about it, but Helmeppo's answers didn't paint the most coherent picture.

“That... that creature, the one that attacked Zoro. Does it belong to you?”

“Yes,” Helmeppo initially said. Then, “...No. It... doesn't belong to anyone.”

“What is it?” Coby asked. “I only saw it for a second before it knocked me out.” Now that he thought about it again, he was really surprised it hadn't torn him to shreds. He didn't even have a single bite or scratch mark from it, just the bruises where it had thrown him to the ground.

Sounding a little unsure, Helmeppo said, “It's... a wolf, I guess.”

Coby laughed in spite of himself. A wolf? It was humongous. It had  _ towered _ over the other hounds, and those had been plenty big enough already. “How in the world did you get a wolf as a pet? And all those hounds!”

“My family has always had a way with dogs,” Helmeppo said with a shrug, and that was about the last he'd say on that topic.

Still, Coby couldn't help but wonder (and shiver violently) when he heard the creature howling in the night, its cry less like the call of a wild animal and almost more like the anguished screams of a dying man. It was eerie. It chilled him to the bone. And yet, it was sad. What caused that mournful cry? Was the creature in pain? Was it scared? Coby had no way to be sure, but somehow he felt it sounded lonely.

But maybe he was just projecting. Maybe the creature was simply yelling out its blood lust, and Coby only thought it sounded lonely because that was how  _ he _ felt. Honestly, being trapped in a dark dungeon wasn't miles apart from living in Alvida's keep, but after he'd been freed by Luffy and had the pleasure of the odd teen's company for even just a day, he didn't think he could go back to being so isolated. The past few days had proven difficult, with Helmeppo showing up just long enough to remind him how alone he was when he left.

It was bad; he was getting attached to his captor because he had no one else. He recognized the twinges of feeling poking their heads up at odd intervals, similar to bits of emotion that had tried to surface many times while under Alvida's 'loving care'. On the rare instances when she had been at all nice to him, he could feel his opinion of her shifting faster than it had any right to, could feel himself beginning to give her the benefit of the doubt, that maybe she really was a good person underneath it all and that she actually cared about him. His subconscious had tried to make him love her, and if she hadn't been unable to refrain from violence for more than a few days at a time, it might have succeeded.

Helmeppo had never hit him, or threatened him much or sworn at him or really been very rude at all. He gave Coby food, he didn't let him die, and they even had moderately pleasant conversations some times. But he still kept him there in that horrible dark dungeon, and still hoped to use him as bait to capture Luffy and Zoro, and he still refused to even consider doing anything to help the citizens of the town, even though it was his family's duty. He wasn't a good person, and Coby knew any positive emotion he felt toward the lord's selfish son was just a trick of his tired and lonely brain, the same as it had been before.

... _ Alvida _ had never looked so lost.

The situation got worse (although in some ways it was certainly better) when Helmeppo decided to move Coby out of the dungeon.

“Put this on,” he said, handing Coby a scrap of fabric meant to be a blindfold.

“What? Why?”

He heard Helmeppo sigh, sounding frustrated. “Do you  _ want _ to stay in the dungeon forever? I'm tired of having to come down here to feed you, so I'm taking you upstairs. The blindfold is so you can't see how to get out, obviously.”

Coby certainly didn't want to stay in the dungeon any longer than he had to, so he did as he was told and tied the blindfold tight around his eyes. Even after hearing the loud deep screeching of the cell door opening, it was a little jarring when Helmeppo's hand wrapped around his wrist and tugged. Touch was so rare in his life the past few years, it felt truly strange, especially when deprived of sight.   


Walking when he couldn't see where he was going was beyond nerve-wracking, particularly as they were climbing quite a lot of stairs, and Helmeppo wasn't especially vocal about what was coming up next, like a left turn, or a step up, or a crack in the floor, but his hand did shift down off Coby's wrist and around his palm instead, and that made the whole thing a little easier.

Focusing as he was on putting one foot in front of the other, Coby couldn't put a lot of effort into using his other senses, but he did notice that the whole castle was chilly, and eerily quiet, and he'd bet it was likely dark as well. It had a smell too, of a room that had been kept closed up for years, but also of, well, dogs. In fact, their distant growling and scraping was all he could hear, aside from the shuffling of his and Helmeppo's feet. Were there any other people living in this keep at all?

When they finally finished the arduous journey and Coby was allowed to take the blindfold off, he found himself in one of the fanciest rooms he'd ever seen, with the bare exception of Lady Alvida's room, which, of course, he'd had to clean. This one looked like it could probably use his attentions too, with dust and cobwebs strung up in all the corners, and a light layer of grunge over most everything else. It fit with the theme of the rest of the castle, though it did smell a little more lived-in, and vaguely less like dogs-- which was strange, actually, because there was a dog curled up on the bedspread. Coby couldn't help the squeak that escaped him; he was still a little terrified of dogs, after what had happened recently.

“Oh that's just Sorro. He's a big softie,” Helmeppo said, like the animal wasn't capable of probably ripping both of them apart if it felt like. He approached the dog (marginally smaller than the ones from the main hall, maybe, but still big and with very sharp teeth) and sunk his hands into its shaggy brown fur, scratching vigorously. “Isn't that right, Sorro? Aren't you a good boy?”

To the dog's credit, he wagged his tail like he hadn't seen his master in ages and licked him affectionately. Even when Coby took a few steps further into the room, the dog didn't start to growl at him or even seem to care that he was there at all.

Content (enough) that Sorro wasn't going to be a threat, Coby returned to the issue at hand. “Is this... your room?” he asked.

“None of the other rooms are usable,” Helmeppo said, by way of answer. “So you're stuck with me until your friends come try to break you out.”

Strange, Coby thought. Just about every part of the situation was irritatingly weird. As much as he appreciated being out of the dungeon, he wished he could understand any part of what was going on here. He gaped at Helmeppo in frustration before he settled on one of the myriad other issues. “Why don't you just let me go?”

Helmeppo scoffed (a favorite noise of his). “What, so you can go amass an army to bring back? And don't deny that's exactly what you'd do.”

It was true, so Coby didn't bother fighting it. He switched focus to the next issue on his mind. (He hadn't figured Helmeppo was going to suddenly decide to let him out anyway.) “Are you the only one who lives here? You and your father, I guess. Where did everyone else go? There must have been a lot of people here at one point. Servants? Soldiers?”

The question seemed almost physically painful to Helmeppo, if his grimace was any indicator. “They're all... gone,” he said, the word sticking in his throat a little. “Everyone with any sense left years ago.”

“Why?” Coby imagined what could have caused a fully-functional keep to suddenly empty of all of its inhabitants. An economic crisis? The surrounding town seemed alright though, even without the lord's help. Maybe the people just got tired of all the dogs.

A sound almost like a growl came from Helmeppo. “I don't want to talk about it,” he said, voice lower and more gruff than usual. Coby could feel the stagnant old distress radiating off him like fog, so he didn't press the issue.

But there was one last matter eating away at him, a question he was almost afraid to ask but couldn't ignore. The weight of this strange place was pressing in around him, and now that there was light and some air and he was afforded the clarity to think that the dungeons had suppressed, he desperately needed to know. “What... what will you do with me if Luffy and Zoro never come back?”

Predictably, Helmeppo didn't answer. He just walked across the room to the other side, near the window, and stood there, looking tense. He stood there for a few long moments, rigid, and though he was still, Coby thought it seemed like he was shaking. “Make yourself at home,” he said stiffly before turning again and striding from the room, fists clenched.

Coby could hear a heavy lock click in the door, giving the situation a sense of finality, and in lieu of making any plans to escape or yelling for Helmeppo to come back or trying to puzzle out what had just happened, he sat down where he was and just breathed.

xXx

He didn't know how long he sat there, but he was eventually interrupted from his quiet contemplation by Helmeppo's dog. It unfolded its gangly limbs from underneath itself and padded across the room to inspect him. Coby froze (well, not that he had been moving before) as the dog sniffed him, yawned widely (giving Coby a  _ great _ view of its long spear-point teeth), and then laid back down, just next to him this time.

Maybe Helmeppo was right?, Coby thought, because the dog really didn't seem like much of a threat. Hesitantly, he reached out and let his hand hover over the dog's neck. It quirked an ear at him, but didn't give any sort of warning, so Coby swallowed the little lump in his throat and set his hand down. Sorro didn't seem to mind the contact; in fact, he gave his tail a sleepy little wag, thumping on the floor, so Coby decided to pet the dog properly and was rewarded with further wags and attempted casual cuddles.

Honestly, it made him feel a lot better.

Now that he'd been pulled out of his numb reverie by the surprisingly friendly hound, Coby's mind began to tick back up to speed. He still didn't really want to  _ think _ , not about the mess he'd found himself in, at any rate, but he couldn't help being curious about his new environment. And Helmeppo had said to make himself at home (although whether he really meant it or not was anyone's guess). Home, Coby generally thought, was a place where you were comfortable and at very least knew where everything was, so he stood and started on the not-unpleasant task of familiarizing himself with this new space.

It was large, several times larger than the room he'd had as a child, and painted in light colors. The walls were a bit less vibrant than he thought they were probably supposed to be, a little greyed out like everything else, but they still gave the place a relatively cheerful feeling. (Relatively being the key word.) There were a few paintings hung around the room, and some other decorations, all covered in dust but still clearly expensive. There were three windows set in the wall furthest from the door, each obscured by drapes that had at some point probably been a pinkish color. Coby reached up and pushed one set to the side, letting in the late afternoon light, bathing everything in a warm orange he'd almost thought he'd never see again.

Another set of three was leaning against the right wall: three gleaming swords. They were the only things in the room that didn't seem to have been sitting untouched for ages. Their sheaths were clean and polished, and though Coby didn't dare touch them (he wasn't sure why; fear? respect?), he was sure the blades would have a mirror finish. He wondered what their significance was until he recalled the knight, Zoro, saying he needed to get his swords back. Helmeppo must have taken them from him after the creature brought him back.

He still wasn't sure  _ why _ exactly Helmeppo had decided to imprison the knight. He'd killed some of his dogs, which was obviously a trigger issue for the lord's son, but if he'd been enraged about it, then the anger had faded since then. He didn't seem especially upset anymore, or at least he hadn't mentioned it to Coby if he was. So, what was the benefit of holding Zoro captive? Pride? It seemed the likeliest answer. The knight had attacked something that belonged to him, so Helmeppo had simply made it a point to punish him. That was the sort of thing villains did, wasn't it? And that was why Coby was still being held there: in the vain hope that the knight would throw himself back down into the lion's den.

Logical, maybe, but Coby still thought it didn't feel quite right.

Putting it from his mind for now, he turned instead to the opposite wall, where a row of bookshelves sat. It'd been years since he'd had the opportunity to read; Alvida's collection of books had been extremely modest, but aside from dusting them, he hadn't been allowed to touch them anyway. He'd never had many books as a child either, but he'd been intimately familiar with each one.

Hoping Helmeppo wouldn't mind, he took a stack of them and settled down on the soft bed to read, Sorro snuggled up to his side.

xXx

Moonlight filtered in through the window when Coby woke, painting soft white stripes on the floor and coloring the rest of the room in a deep blue. He wasn't sure what had woken him at first, but when Sorro began to wag his tail, he realized that Helmeppo had entered the room and was standing near the door.

Instantly, Coby sat up, embarrassed and a little worried. “I'm sorry!” he said, not sure if he was apologizing for falling asleep, for falling asleep in Helmeppo's bed, or for some other unnamed transgression. He scrambled to get out of the bed, but Helmeppo just held a hand up at him.

“It's fine. I wasn't going to make you sleep on the floor.”

Slowly, Coby lowered himself back down onto the bed. He wouldn't look this gift-horse in the mouth, but he still thought his captor ought to be a little more upset. “Don't you need to sleep?” he asked.

Helmeppo shook his head. “I sleep in the day.” He walked forward, into the patch of moonlight, and Coby could see that he was holding a small tray of food, which he set down on one of the bedside tables. It was more of the same, just bread and an apple, but Coby supposed it was the best he could manage without any kitchen staff around, and he was grateful that it seemed fairly fresh. He wondered where he got even this much, if the castle was truly empty.

“Thank you,” Coby said quietly. He wasn't sure why, but he felt a little in awe at the moment. Maybe it was the quietness, or the ethereal lighting, or the fact that he was warm and felt somehow safe for the first time in quite a while.

Nodding (he didn't seem fond of 'your welcome's), Helmeppo made as if to leave the room, motioning Sorro to follow him, but some destructive instinct had Coby reaching out to stop him. They both turned to each other with fear and surprise written on their faces, and Coby stammered, not sure what had come over him. “Uhh,” he said. “Uhh... w-where are you going?”

Looking as if he was truly surprised by Coby's question, like he had been expecting anything else, Helmeppo responded simply, “Out.” Then he seemed to get his wits back about him and elaborated slightly. “I've got some things to do. ...I'll try to find you some breakfast when I come back.” He pulled himself out of Coby's grip (which had gone quite slack) and left the room, looking over his shoulder as he went.

In a bit of a daze, Coby ate, slid under the silky sheets, and went back to bed, trying not to notice that his heart was beating fast, and that it maybe wasn't entirely from fear.


	4. Chapter 4

He woke again when Sorro lathed his long tongue over Coby's face. He gasped, jerking away from the dog, and only realized where he was when he heard Helmeppo's quiet chuckling from several feet away. “Guess he's taken a liking to you,” he said rather cheerfully, though Coby noted that he still looked as tired as usual, if not more-so. “Did you sleep well?” 

“Pretty well, thanks,” he replied, not bothering to mention that he'd been woken several times in the night by the howling of what he assumed was the creature. They'd already established that there was nothing Helmeppo could do about it.

Helmeppo nodded, and set down the bowl he was holding. “Good. If you don't mind, I think I'll take my turn now. I managed to find some oatmeal, if you want it.” He gestured at the bowl he'd brought.

The idea of eating something different was ridiculously exciting, so Coby slid from the bed and grabbed the bowl with his usual thanks and grateful grin, and took his breakfast to the corner near the bookshelves. He dug in eagerly (even though Helmeppo had neglected to provide a spoon, and he had to drink the thick goop straight from the bowl).

Meanwhile, though he didn't exactly mean to, he watched Helmeppo across the room as he began to get ready to sleep. A look of consternation on his face, he paused by the bedside, glancing around at various dressers and cabinets and then briefly at Coby, before just kicking his shoes off and getting into bed otherwise fully clothed, his movement somewhat stiff. He laid down with his eyes closed for about a minute before he opened them again, just to give the window (curtains drawn back) a dirty look, and roll over to face the opposite direction. Even from across the room, Coby could hear his annoyed huff.

“Want me to close them?” Coby asked, setting his bowl on the floor and standing.

Helmeppo grunted, then after a few quiet seconds said, “Please,” in possibly the poutiest voice ever.

Despite the fact that he knew it wasn't wise to taunt him, Coby couldn't help but laugh as he closed the blinds and tied them shut. “You didn't think this through much, did you?”

His voice was muffled somewhat from the way he was now bundled in the blankets, but Helmeppo made an indignant noise at him and said, “I told you, none of the other rooms are usable. Just... find something to occupy yourself while I get some sleep.”

The obvious answer to Helmeppo's dilemma, in Coby's reckoning, was to have left him in the dungeons, and at this point he still wasn't sure why he _hadn't_. Not wanting to have to go down there to feed him seemed like a flimsy excuse, since it hadn't been that long of a walk even when he was blindfolded. But, of course, there was no way he was going to mention that to his new roommate, lest the man decide Coby was right and throw him back down there.

There was another good answer for getting Coby out of his way (aside from letting him go or killing him), and although he was pretty sure he knew what Helmeppo's response was going to be, he suggested it anyway. “Maybe you could let me out. Into the rest of the castle, I mean. That way you could have some privacy while you slept, and I could do something useful, like... figure out how to use the kitchen. You must be even more tired of bread and apples than I am.”

Rolling over just enough to give him a warning look, Helmeppo scowled. “You have some sort of death wish, don't you? I already told you, the other rooms aren't safe. Just go sit down and shut up for a few hours, won't you?”

Coby didn't argue that that wasn't actually what Helmeppo had said. He'd never said anything about the safety of the other rooms, only that they weren't usable. Furthermore, Coby had assumed he meant _bedrooms,_ not the whole rest of the keep. But when he thought about it further, it did make some sense. Though he'd only seen the hounds in the main hall, they probably had free reign of the rest of the castle. And where the hounds went, it could only be assumed that their terrifying leader could go as well. Even if it meant being stuck in this single room the rest of his life, Coby would have preferred to never come face-to-face with that creature again. (Though, ideally, _neither_ would be the case.)

Feeling a little bad for pestering him while he was trying to sleep, Coby grinned sheepishly and ducked his head, retreating back to the corner by the bookshelves. It was pretty dark in the room with the curtains drawn, but he sat down and tried to read in the thin beam of daylight shining from the nearest window. (He was still missing his glasses, but if he leaned in far enough he could read larger texts alright.) He'd only been at it for a minute when he heard Helmeppo make a noise rather like a sigh. Coby looked up and their eyes met, and it seemed like maybe Helmeppo was going to say something. Instead, he turned back around and presumably went to sleep.

The day passed quietly, but far more enjoyably than any previous day in Coby's recent memory. Helmeppo's small library had quite the variety, and even just skimming through them he'd only gotten through a small fraction before his host was waking up.

Helmeppo only gave him a slightly strange look as he got out of bed (followed by the ever-faithful Sorro) and went about his apparent 'morning' routine, which mostly consisted of putting on his shoes, tucking the sheets back neatly on the bed, and then opening the blinds. He didn't seem to have anything to say to Coby, giving him barely more than a grunt before taking Sorro and leaving the room.

Mostly undisturbed by Helmeppo's reticence, Coby continued to read.

Several hours later, Helmeppo returned with some lunch (the usual), but didn't stick around for long before he left the room again. This time he left Sorro with Coby, even though the dog wagged his tail cutely in hopes of getting to go out again.

“No,” Helmeppo told the dog firmly, but softly, his voice just barely traveling across the room to where Coby still sat. “You've gotta stay here. I don't want you getting hurt.”

Hurt? Coby wondered if he'd heard that right. Was Sorro at some sort of risk out in the rest of the castle? Did the other dogs not get along with him? And if that was the case, why was he allowed to go out sometimes but not other times? Coby pondered over it for a while, distracted from his book by the thoughts, and by the dog's cold nose nudging at his hand. Sorro stayed glued to his side for the half-hour it took to finish the chapter he was on, and then followed at his heels as he started towards bed.

As he was about to get under the covers, a thought crossed Coby's mind: the memory of that morning, Helmeppo standing awkwardly by the bedside, looking indecisive and glancing at his wardrobes. He hadn't thought about it much then, but when he realized Helmeppo had probably been considering changing clothes, he felt a bit embarrassed; not only at the thought of shedding his clothing in front of someone else (or having someone strip in front of him), but of the fact that he hadn't really considered how disgusting he'd probably gotten after a week without any type of bath. He'd only been thinking of it as something that was an inconvenience to him, something he'd put up with because he didn't really have any other choice. But he was sharing a bed with someone else now (in a manner of speaking), and he was vaguely mortified that he hadn't considered how Helmeppo would feel about Coby just diving into his bed in the same clothes he'd been wearing for maybe the majority of a month.

So instead of getting into bed, he stripped off his dirty, worn pants and shirt and set them in a pile beside the night stand. He had a brief moment of indecision (in which he probably looked comically like Helmeppo had that morning, he realized) before he decided he ought to _re_ dress, and went to rummage through one of the clothing chests.

He was a little surprised to find that that particular chest was full of very fine things, all clean and nicely folded and still quite vibrant, unlike most of the rest of the castle or even the room. It was obvious that this place had once been very fancy, but to find anything (aside from Zoro's swords, still leaning by the bed, still gleaming) which proved its past grandeur was surprising. The clothing that Helmeppo wore was nicer than what Coby had, by far, but it still looked like it had seen better days. Coby had simply assumed that all of his clothing was in such a state.

Of the three clothing chests which Coby could find, only one of them had anything in it which Coby wouldn't feel terribly guilty borrowing. He picked out a plain shirt and pants and threw them on quickly, embarrassed enough that he had been standing around so long in just his underthings, even though nobody but Sorro had been around to see him. His face heated up a little as he imagined Helmeppo opening the door to see him standing there in only underwear. When he changed the underclothes out for his borrow nightwear in his imagined scene, the mortification abated only slightly, so he quickly got into bed and pulled the covers up around him. It took a little while for his mind to calm down, but eventually he did manage to fall asleep.

xXx

The morning greeted him with a shuffling sound, and when he opened his eyes he found Helmeppo setting up a tall partition in the less-used corner of the room. Behind the zigzag makeshift wall, Coby could see an end table piled with rags and a mid-sized basin, at least large enough to soak his head in. When he wandered over to investigate, he found that the chamber pot had been moved there too.

Helmeppo seemed rather pleased with himself at the little bath-room he'd set up, at least until Coby smiled at him, at which point he affected an exaggerated scowl and explained, “You were starting to smell.” Coby wasn't put off by the statement, but he did feel a little embarrassed when Helmeppo raised an eyebrow at his clothes, and maybe a little worse when Helmeppo didn't _say_ anything about it before turning away to finish adjusting the partition.

Having clean clothes and the ability to bathe (in privacy, no less) raised Coby's spirits almost impossibly high-- which, unfortunately, only made it easier for them to plummet. After he'd washed and eaten and returned to reading while Helmeppo slept, he found himself now dwelling on his other problems, the things which had previously taken a back-burner to his physical discomfort. Chief among them were his concerns over the future. He wasn't worried for his safety, at least, but he didn't want to spend the rest of his life in this castle, and he had no way of making Helmeppo let him go. He didn't even know _why_ he was here. Was he still just acting as bait? It had been a week, perhaps two weeks? Was that not long enough to prove that Luffy and Zoro weren't coming back for him? He wanted _out_ , he wanted to go find his parents. And he wanted, somehow, to fix the situation with the townsfolk.

The more he thought about it, the more anxious he felt, the more angry he became. The way he saw it, there were two factors, two points of blame: the creature, and Helmeppo. The creature, who terrorized and killed the people of the town, who apparently held in thrall the army of hounds, was the biggest problem. Coby wondered... he wondered, limbs trembling at the thought, if there was some way he might kill it.

And then there was Helmeppo, who kept Coby locked up here and didn't even _try_ to do anything for the townsfolk who were under his responsibility. He could walk among the dogs; surely they must listen to him to some degree. Couldn't he stop them from ravaging the town at night? Couldn't he do _something_?

And, and where was his father? The Lord Morgan? Coby had seen neither hide nor hair of the man who supposedly owned this keep. Wasn't it his responsibility, above all others, to take care of a terrible situation like this? A lord was supposed to be strong; as much as Coby hated her, Alvida had been that, at least. She'd kept her lands in order. Who was this Morgan? Was he so weak of a leader that he couldn't stop whatever had caused all his people to flee the castle?

He didn't know what he was doing, but Coby found himself setting down his book and standing, and walking with deliberate steps across the room to where Zoro's swords still leaned against the wall by the bed. Without thinking too hard on it, he reached out and wrapped his hand around the smallest one, an exotic white-sheathed thing.

But before he could even pull the sword to him, he registered Sorro's low growling, and when he looked over to where the dog lay next to his master in the bed, he saw Helmeppo's eyes flash open. He snapped his hand out like a snake attacking prey, and grabbed Coby's wrist in a deathgrip.

“Do you want to _die?_ ” he snarled, and, trembling, Coby dropped the sword. It clattered loudly at his feet.

“I...” he began, unsure what sort of response was trying to fall out of his mouth. Anger and apprehension warred in his heart, causing it to beat twice as fast. What had he been about to do? Sword in hand, he still hadn't known.

“I could kill you!” Helmeppo yelled, and Coby realized with a sickening click that it wasn't meant as a threat. He sounded as scared as Coby felt.

Heart pounding in his chest, because he'd just realized the position he was truly in, Coby stood deathly still like the prey he knew he might be if he didn't deescalate the situation. He stilled his breathing; Helmeppo's was harsh, his eyes wide and bright and full of fear, his hand around Coby's wrist slick with sweat, nails sharp and digging in, probably breaking the skin.

Coby closed his eyes in a calmly submissive gesture. Oh, he knew how to deal with monsters, and they wanted to see you scared. Crying and pleading would not help you; it only made their bloodlust stronger, let them know their cruelty was working.

“What are you _thinking_?” Helmeppo said, his voice sounding raw. “I could have killed you. Do you want to leave that bad?”

No, Coby decided. He really didn't. Not at the risk of his life, and not now that he understood. He stood there quietly for another minute, watching as the tension drained from Helmeppo's face to be replaced by a soft horror. His hold on Coby's wrist lost its strength, and then finally he pulled himself away, pushing back on the bed to sit far enough that he couldn't reach him. (They both knew it to be an illusion; if something triggered that frightening instinct again, there was little distance Helmeppo couldn't close in no time.)

When it seemed that Helmeppo had calmed down a bit, looking at Coby warily, as if _he'd_ been the one about to commit murder, Coby found his voice and used it. “When?” he asked, very softly.

Huddled in his nest of blankets, Helmeppo only glared at Coby. He didn't want to acknowledge what the boy had pieced together just now. But after a minute, he responded, if a bit vaguely for Coby's taste. “We've always been this way, my family.” He was quiet another few moments. “It wasn't a problem until a few years ago.”

“What happened?”

Even in the dim light, Coby could see the uncertainty on Helmeppo's face as he debated telling the story. Curious as he was, he didn't press, and eventually Helmeppo decided to answer. “You probably won't believe me, but... there was a curse.”

Inappropriate as it would have been, Coby almost let loose a surprised laugh, thinking of Luffy; apparently curses weren't as uncommon as he once thought. He didn't want to seem callous though, so he caught himself and nodded to continue.

“Some dignitaries from... I don't know, some country, came to visit. It was fine for a while, but they got into an argument with my father and left. The night after that was... chaos.” He paused, glanced up to check that Coby was still listening, then looked back out into the middle distance again. “We'd been... a family of shapeshifters for generations, but we always had control over our form. Then, suddenly, at night we...lost ourselves. So many people died that first night.”

“That's horrible. I'm sorry,” Coby said, aware that it sounded trite but unwilling to let the moment go by in silence.

Helmeppo nodded mutely. “Yeah, well, that's why everyone left. Everyone who wasn't dead or turned.”

That painted a half-formed picture in Coby's mind, of the main hall, all littered with bodies, some human and some... not. He wasn't sure though. “Turned?”

A humorless laugh escaped Helmeppo's scowling mouth, and he confirmed what Coby had determined. “All those dogs out there? They were the ones who didn't succumb to their wounds.” He sat up slightly, apparently having noticed the way Coby subconsciously leaned away, and how he rubbed at his wrist where Helmeppo's half-formed claws had just barely broken the skin. “It's only the pack-leader whose bites are contagious though.”

“But you...” Coby felt himself shaking a little as he fought to ask his burning question. “That creature. It's you, right?”

He was honestly surprised that Helmeppo didn't try to deny it, as he hadn't struck Coby as the sort to openly admit to his flaws. “It is,” he said, doing his level best to hold Coby's gaze.

“The dogs listen to you,” Coby said faintly, almost hopefully, grasping for something to make this situation better. He remembered the way the hounds had stopped their assault of the three intruders in order to look at the creature when it entered the room, the way they had seemed so happy to see him, so reverent. It was hard to reconcile that beast with the embarrassed young man before him now, huddled under blankets like they were armor.

“Only a little,” Helmeppo said, shaking his head. “But I'm not the pack leader. I told you, it's my father that owns this place.”

Coby tried to put all the pieces of the puzzle together, but they just weren't adding up properly. “I don't understand,” he said. “Why... why is it like this then, if your father can control them? Is he letting them run wild on purpose? Trying to scare people into obedience? Why doesn't he stop them? Why doesn't he do something--?”

With each of Coby's questions, Helmeppo's face drew down further, his agitation growing visibly until he seemed only moments away from growling. “Because he can't!” Helmeppo yelled, voice still hoarse, though from emotion or from the first vestiges of transformation, Coby could only guess. He sighed aggressively before he continued. “He's too far gone to even control himself.”

“...But you said he was the leader?”

“And he will be until the day he dies!” Helmeppo nearly snarled then, though it wasn't at Coby. “But he's not human anymore. That first night, when the morning came and everyone else changed back, he stayed a monster. He hasn't changed back since. We locked him up, and he's been there the whole time.”

A silence settled over the room as Coby absorbed the information. It all made sense. More sense, at least. The dogs ran loose because their true master wasn't around to stop them. They only barely listened to Helmeppo's human form, but then when he became the creature...

“Why did you attack the townspeople?”

He looked ashamed then, and annoyed perhaps at his own failures. “I never meant to. But I can't control the night form any better than my father can.” He looked up and could probably see the gears working in Coby's head, so he preempted his questions as best he could. “I can manage a little bit in the daytime. It was day when you and those knights started attacking. I was sleeping until I heard the hounds yelling, but then I changed without thinking about it. It was day, so I still had some control.”

“That's why you didn't kill me?” Coby asked, though it wasn't really a question. He was grateful, and glad he hadn't taken Luffy's suggestion to try to sneak in at night. Helmeppo didn't answer, but that was fine. The puzzle was mostly solved, and Coby could finally see what felt like coherent enough of a picture to begin to ease his tension. He was still a little curious about one thing though. “Why are you so protective over the hounds?”

A sadness settled over Helmeppo's eyes, faint but still distinctly different from his usual haughty expression. “They're still my people,” he said. “Most of them were soldiers or people who worked in the castle. They're not-- I don't think they even remember who they used to be. They're thralls; they don't get to change back in the day. But they saved me when everything was in chaos.”

“I thought you couldn't really control them.”

“Well I can't,” Helmeppo said plaintively, “but they're still loyal to my family. On the third or fourth day, the rest of the soldiers were hunting for me. They'd decided it was safest to kill the whole family, and I was the only one left. But I guess that was when the wounded started turning, and they attacked the soldiers on instinct. So, of course I'm protective of them. Do you know how many bounty hunters they've saved me from?”

Given the number of skeletons that lay littered about the main hall, and the many more he probably hadn't seen, he could definitely take a guess. Although, just as many of the corpses could have been townspeople. It was a pretty terrible thought.

The whole situation was terrible, horrid for just about everyone involved. “I'm sorry,” Coby said, regretful that he couldn't think of something less redundant to say. How was being sorry going to help anyone?

“It's not your fault,” Helmeppo said, sighing heavily. “Heck, you're the only one who's tried to do anything so far.”

“Not Zoro?”

Helmeppo made a dismissive noise. “Bounty hunter,” he explained. “He only came for my father's head. I should have let him have it.”

That didn't seem right to Coby, despite how much of this situation was perhaps the lord's doing. “Nobody could blame you for wanting to keep your father safe,” he told Helmeppo, and he watched as the man's eyes lit up sadly.

“You're too kind,” he said, half admonishment and half admiration. “You didn't know him. Before or after he turned, nobody would have mourned him. He's been a monster a lot longer than he's been a wolf.”

There was more to it than that, Coby could tell. He could tell that, regardless of his protestations, Helmeppo still must have loved his father. “But you still take care of him. You could let him die, but you don't.”

Helmeppo said nothing. He didn't deny the claim, and he didn't accept it, and Coby was rather sure that it had very little to do with Lord Morgan being worth his son's time, and quite a lot to do with Helmeppo being a better person than Coby had initially given him credit for.

“I'll tell you more later, if you want,” Helmeppo said after a quiet moment had passed. “But I really am rather tired, if you don't mind letting me sleep.”

Coby nodded and stepped back. “Of course. Good night.”

“It's never a good night,” Helmeppo said with a bitter laugh, although he was clearly relieved that he finally had someone he could joke about his situation with.

“Then good afternoon,” Coby amended, with an eye roll that lacked any annoyance.

He was back in his spot by the bookshelf when Helmeppo spoke up, quiet in his nest of blankets. “Sorry I hurt your wrist.”

It didn't really hurt anymore, and in the wake of all the information he'd just gotten, Coby had mostly forgotten about it. He responded, “Sorry I thought about killing you.”

“Eh, you'd have been dumb not to,” Helmeppo replied. “But don't do it again.”

Coby nodded and, realizing Helmeppo was faced the other way and couldn't see him, said, “I promise.” It was a pretty steep promise to keep, especially in a situation like his, but he didn't think it would be a problem. 


	5. Chapter 5

That afternoon they spent in a sort of companionable state, mostly quiet but somehow quite a lot more comfortable than they had been before. They ate together, and neither of them mentioned the conversation they’d had that morning, but it was clear that things had changed. Despite the big reveal, despite the fact that Coby ought to be more scared now than he had been before, it seemed they both felt more trusting of the other. That was the power of the truth, Coby supposed.  
  
When the time came for Helmeppo to go out without Sorro, Coby felt bold enough and assured enough of Helmeppo’s trust in him to voice the question on his mind. “Where do you go that you can’t take Sorro? The dogs don’t attack him, do they?”  
  
The man shook his head, and his hair swayed with the muted action. “He's safe among the hounds,” he said. There was a pause before he explained, “I’m going to take care of my father. He won’t hurt me, but I don’t want to take chances with anyone else, if he were to get out.”  
  
“Oh,” Coby said, and he sunk his hands into the dog’s fur where it had come over to cuddle up against him, knowing Helmeppo was leaving them behind.  
  
Helmeppo said no more on the subject, but gave Coby a nod before he left. The thick bolt echoing on the outside of the door felt a little less heavy than previous days.  
  
It went like this for a while, a span of a week or so, where the two of them lived together in that room in half-comfortable half-silence. Helmeppo’s routine continued as it had before, and Coby was glad he knew where the man went when he left, but the knowledge also weighed on him. The horrors the creature had committed, he now knew were Helmeppo’s sins. The howling and braying he now knew to be as lonely and heartbroken as he’d once intuited. Both made him wonder just how much could be attributed to the man he was becoming familiar with, and how much was just the curse. It was a delicate question though, and Coby hesitated through asking it (though he was done with letting Helmeppo keep his secrets, just as he was sure the young man was done keeping them).  
  
“...How much are you… _you?”_ Coby asked, one afternoon as they both sat reading. (It was something they’d taken to. Helmeppo admitted he used to spend more time wandering the castle or out among the dogs, but that he felt awkward about leaving Coby alone so much now.) The question didn’t need to be explained; there was really only one thing it could mean, and the cloud covering Helmeppo’s expression showed he knew exactly.  
  
“Not much,” Helmeppo answered, frowning inwardly. “I know who I am, and I remember most of what happens, but…” He sighed. “It’s like an impulse I’m driven to follow. It all seems right at the time, and it’s not until I change back that I can think about what I’ve… done.”  
  
Coby did not want to ask about the killing people, so he didn’t. He knew that wouldn’t achieve anything but sadness for both of them.  
  
With that one puzzle piece finally in place, and Coby feeling like he had more of a sense of who Helmeppo was (and that he _was_ indeed at least closer to the man Coby had hope he was than the monster he’d feared), there was, again, not much else to fret about, and again he began to feel the weight of the cage around him. Around them both.  
  
It seemed Helmeppo could feel this too, or feel at least that it was something that was bothering Coby, for he’d likely long since adjusted to it. Coby caught him looking across the way at him, unsurely, as if maybe thinking that this current situation wasn’t going to work out as smoothly as he’d wanted it to. Coby didn’t _think_ he was showing signs of being irritable or anxious, but the more Helmeppo watched him, the more restless the man seemed to become, until he finally sighed, got up and walked to the door, and stood there for a long few seconds.  
  
“Do you still want to see the place?”

“Of course!” Coby said, his mood suddenly rather a lot lighter. “I won't try to escape or anything, I swear!”

Helmeppo chuckled lightly. “Oh I'm sure you won't. The hounds are still out there, after all, and you're not stupid.”

Honestly Coby wasn't entirely sure he wasn't a little bit stupid. He'd gotten into this situation, after all. But he allowed the compliment.  
  
It was midday, not long after Helmeppo woke but still a good few hours before the dogs would be roaming, so they went out into the hall, and took careful quiet steps further into the castle. In a way it was similar to when Coby had been brought _to_ the room, Helmeppo’s hand closed on his wrist (though loosely), the heaviness of the air and smells it brought with it. But he wasn’t blindfolded this time, and that made a significant difference in not only his ability to gauge where he was but also his mood. He felt much less a prisoner this time, though little had really changed. (Sorro walked by his side as well, furry back just under his hand, and that helped too, calming his nerves a bit.)  
  
They didn’t speak in the hallway, Coby following Helmeppo’s cue of silence and his footsteps, trusting him to lead the way to someplace that wouldn’t be too dangerous, relatively speaking. And indeed, the first place they went was a dark and oppressively silent room where there was no sign of dogs or recent damage. Helmeppo closed the door behind them, then finally released Coby’s wrist as he went to light a wall sconce. As soon as the flame flickered to life, Coby gave a tiny soft gasp; the room was dark and silent because it was _stuffed_ with books. Admittedly, nearly any scenery probably would have surprised him a little, but this at very least was a nice surprise.  
  
“There are so many…” he said quietly, in awe.  
  
“Well it’s a library,” Helmeppo said with a shrug, though the look on his face said that he was pleased by Coby’s reaction. He looked pleasantly smug, which Coby was beginning to think of as his prefered state.  
  
“Have you read them all?” Coby asked, turning from the collection to his host, ready to be impressed should Helmeppo claim mastery over the selection. But he just laughed.  
  
“I’ve read a good few,” he said in a way that made it pretty clear it was an overestimate. “But not all of them. I didn’t really like reading when I was a kid. I only took to it… more recently.”  
  
Coby nodded, understanding the implication that Helmeppo only read because there was little else to do. Or at least that he’d only _started_ reading for that reason. But they were still constantly dancing around the whole situation he was in, neither quite comfortable with discussing it openly, so he did nothing else to acknowledge the statement, and started instead to look at the books. But before any of them could really catch his attention, he found himself asking a question he hoped would be somewhat safe.  
  
“So what _did_ you like to do as a kid?”  
  
Helmeppo paused, as if caught off guard by the question, and then he took a moment to think about it. When he decided on an answer, he laughed to himself. “Mostly causing mischief, I guess,” he said, an amused and nostalgic smile on his face. “Running around with my brothers. Playing pranks on the staff. Playing pranks _with_ the staff. Hunting, with my family, I guess. I didn’t like school much. Or rules. Not ones I had to follow, anyway. ...Maybe that’s why I’m not a good leader.”  
  
Frowning, Coby asked, “Aren’t you? You stopped the hounds, on that first day.”  
  
With a self-deprecating laugh, Helmeppo shook his head. “No. It’s only luck that gets them to listen to me. I told you, they’re thralls. They don’t really have a choice.”  
  
Coby thought about that for a minute. “Doing better in school probably wouldn’t have helped much then.”  
  
Helmeppo gave a surprised bark of laughter, though perhaps Coby only thought of it as such because he now knew what he did about Helmeppo’s form and family. “Yeah. Probably not.”  
  
They browsed a while after that, lighting a few more candles so they could better see the tiny print, and eventually took a few stacks with them back to the room. Helmeppo didn’t bother to hold Coby’s wrist on the way back; perhaps he figured Coby wouldn’t be able to run away from him, laden with so much reading material. Or maybe he just trusted Coby a little more, as time went on.  
  
The evidence for that was… complicated. As they made periodic trips out into the rest of the castle, visiting some new room or another every other day, it did seem that Helmeppo was less tightly controlling of Coby’s movements, trusting that he would follow along where he lead. But on the other hand, he also seemed to watch Coby more determinedly, often looking at him out of the corner of his eye when he thought Coby wasn’t paying attention. (As if there was ever a moment in which Coby wasn’t paying attention to his host; they were getting along just fine after their initial heart-to-heart, but it still wouldn’t do to let his guard down in such a situation. He hadn’t survived Alvida by letting his guard down, and although he was becoming loathe to compare Helmeppo to her anymore, he still knew he was a prisoner.)  
  
And Coby couldn’t resign himself to that fate. “It’s not that I don’t appreciate getting to see the rest of the castle,” he began, as they poked through one of the old common rooms in a casual hunt to find something of use or interest. “But, it still doesn’t make much sense for me to be here, does it?”  
  
Helmeppo turned to him with the most peculiar expression, something almost offended that touched the edge of betrayal, scared, but nearly friendly all the same. “I can’t let you leave,” he said. His hands gripped a little tighter at the bronze vase he’d just picked up.  
  
Coby sighed, though this was not an unexpected response. “I think it’s pretty obvious that Luffy and Zoro aren’t coming back for me. There’s not really any point to keeping me then, is there?”  
  
The expression on his captor’s face was one Coby might call a pout, but not in Helmeppo’s hearing. It looked for a minute like he was going to say something, a retort or excuse fighting to escape his mouth, but in the end he just turned away and went back to sorting through the mess of the room with little more than a wordless grumble, his shoulders stiff as he ignored Coby.  
  
It took another while for Coby to realize fully what it was that Helmeppo wasn’t saying. When it finally clicked, when he finally began to understand the underlying reason that his host refused to so much as discuss why he wasn’t willing to let Coby go, he felt even worse than he had before. The next time he couldn’t help pressing the issue, he went at it from a different angle, one he was surprised at himself for not thinking of before, for all that it should have been obvious.  
  
“Why don’t we _both_ leave?” he asked, as he was waking one morning and Helmeppo was just beginning to get ready to sleep.  
  
“What on earth are you talking about?” Helmeppo raised a skeptical eyebrow at him, pausing mid-stroke of his hair brush through what had been a tangled mess a few weeks before. (He’d started being a little more finicky about his appearance not long after the two of them began rooming together.)  
  
Coby bit his lip before he forged ahead. “You shouldn’t have to live the rest of your life like this. You don’t deserve to be a prisoner here just because of your father.”  
  
Helmeppo looked shocked by the idea. “Leave? Where would I even go?” A few suggestions were on the tip of Coby’s tongue, ideas like… maybe going with him to find his parents, but Helmeppo shook his head before he even had the chance to voice them. “No. I… can’t! That’s not how this works. This is my home. I have to stay here. Nobody else is going to look after my father. He depends on me.”  
  
The distinct sadness in Helmeppo’s eyes was almost too much for Coby to bear, and coupled with his failure to convince his host that things could be different he had to turn away. He hugged his knees to his chest, under the plush blankets of Helmeppo’s bed, knowing he couldn’t really counter that argument. Helmeppo was right; there was nobody else who was going to look after Morgan if his son left. Locked up in the dungeon, the man would die, and despite everything Coby had heard, he couldn’t in good conscience tell his friend that that was a good idea.  
  
They didn’t speak as they switched places. They didn’t talk much for the rest of the day either. They both just wallowed in the unfortunate truth of the situation: Helmeppo was stuck here, because he couldn’t just let his father die.  
  
And Coby was stuck here, because Helmeppo was too lonely to let him go.  
  
It was a dilemma, made worse for the fact that there was nothing Coby could do even if it was an easy decision. He _cared_ about Helmeppo. Perhaps it was illogical. Perhaps it made no sense for Coby to be so emotionally invested in a man he’d known less than a month, who was responsible for the misery of not only him but a number of townsfolk. But… Coby had never had very many friends, let alone ones he felt he could really… understand. And against all odds he felt he really understood his captor, almost frighteningly well. To have been laid low at the whim of others more powerful than yourself, and then to be faced with a daunting new possibility. He got it. And if Luffy hadn’t been there, if Alvida had merely died of disease and Coby had escaped with the other servants, he didn’t know if he’d have had the guts to even go back home, let alone to try to find his parents. He didn’t know _what_ he’d have done.  
  
He wanted to be that for Helmeppo, that driving force, that inspiration. He wanted to help make things better, because the more time he spent around the sad young man, the more he saw how human he was beneath the monster and the madness of being so caged.  
  
But it seemed Helmeppo didn’t want to save himself, and Coby’s only remaining options were to remain and help stave off insanity as it rode the lonely wind into the tower, or to run and leave Helmeppo to his fate. Neither sounded good; neither felt right. And at this point it didn’t matter, because Helmeppo wouldn’t let Coby out of his sight except when he was sleeping or the creature was prowling, and Coby wasn’t remotely brave enough to wander the dangerous castle, looking for an outlet. Until something changed, he knew he was trapped.  
  
xXx  
  
The change came one afternoon as Coby joined Helmeppo in exploring a room that had once belonged to his parents.  
  
“This bed is huge,” Coby murmured, running his hand along the dusty coverlet, knowing it had once been extremely fine.  
  
Helmeppo smiled, one of those soft, far-off smiles of his long-past. “I remember sleeping here when I was really little. I was the baby of the family, so I got to spend more time with my parents. Sometimes they’d change, you know, into their wolf forms, and I’d curl up between them, blanketed in their thick fur. It always felt… safe.”  
  
Coby could imagine it. The image brought a smile to his face, and it made him remember his own parents. “That sounds nice. My parents were just humans. Obviously. But I remember them rocking me back to sleep after I had a nightmare. I used to have a lot of nightmares as a kid. My mom always said my imagination was too good.” He didn’t finish the thought, that his imagination couldn’t have been _that_ good, since he’d never imagined any of the horrors he’d encountered the past few years. In his childhood nightmares, the monsters had always been shadowy demons, not werewolves, and certainly not the humans he now knew them to more often be.  
  
For a minute it seemed that Helmeppo wasn’t going to say anything else, but then he looked to Coby from the corner of his eye as he feigned interest in something on an elaborate dresser. “What happened to them?” he asked.  
  
Swallowing, Coby thought of how to explain, without mentioning Luffy or dredging up an uncomfortable past he didn’t really feel the need to talk about. “I don’t know,” he said. “I, um, went away for a few years, and when I went back home the whole village was abandoned. That’s why I came here. To Shells Town, I mean. I thought they might be with the refugees.”  
  
“You didn’t find them?”  
  
Coby grimaced as he admitted, “I didn’t really have a chance to look.”  
  
Helmeppo tried to hide his own answering grimace, but Coby saw it before he turned away, saw the distinct guilt in it. “Maybe they’re still out there somewhere,” Helmeppo said lightly, and then changed the subject by reminiscing over the jewelry box he’d picked up.  
  
Coby didn’t think much of it. He hadn’t expected Helmeppo to be especially empathetic or anything. The story had just spilled from his mouth in a moment of emotion, too fond and sad and heavy to be contained. It was no matter that his host didn’t really want to talk about it. But it seemed that it remained on Helmeppo’s mind throughout the rest of the day, and that the furtive glances he shot Coby’s way were because he was trying to think of the right words, and the right course of action.  
  
It wasn’t quite night yet, and they were having their evening meal, when Coby noticed that Helmeppo’s eyes wouldn’t leave his face. He blushed at the attention, looking away and back, not sure what to do with his own gaze. Helmeppo’s expression was concentrated and uncomfortable, but also full of a soft, fond… _sadness._ Coby didn’t quite know what to make of it. He was thinking of asking if his host was alright, for all the good that would probably do, when Helmeppo spoke up, in a stunted monologue that sounded painful.  
  
“I’ve been by myself for a long time,” he said, little pauses inserted haphazardly between and in the middle of words as he forced them out. “And, it didn’t seem so bad before, because I didn’t have to think about it, and there never seemed like any other option.”  
  
“I know what you mean,” Coby told him, nodding. Until Luffy, he had thought he might just be stuck in Alvida’s keep forever, and it was easy not to wonder how else it could be because it seemed hopeless.  
  
Helmeppo’s gaze bored into Coby, bordering on a glare but just intense, not angry. Not at all. “Do you?” he asked. “I know you don’t want to be here. You’ve got… things to do. A better life to live. You deserve that. And I can’t just keep you here because I’m--”  
  
Coby didn’t find out what Helmeppo _was_ , but he didn’t need to be told in so many words. At first he’d thought it was because Helmeppo was angry, vengeful, and wanted leverage against the ones he thought had tried to harm him, and maybe initially it was. But it didn’t take long for Coby to realize that the real reason the man kept him around was very simply because he was lonely. He genuinely got the feeling that Helmeppo didn’t even care if someone organized an army against him anymore; that wasn’t why he was holding Coby back.  
  
Sighing, Coby tried to think about how best to respond. He still wanted to leave. No, he _needed_ to leave. Staying there was wrong on too many levels. But simply saying so to Helmeppo had never gotten him anywhere before, so he wasn’t sure what kind of argument would get through to him. Maybe he could assure Helmeppo that he would come back after he’d found his parents? That he would visit him from time to time? Maybe help clean the place up? (He didn’t want to lie though, and to be perfectly honest he wasn’t sure he _would_ come back. He cared about his awkward host, but a place like this was just too dangerous.)  
  
No words were needed though. Helmeppo had come to his own conclusion, probably earlier in the day.  
  
“I can’t keep you here,” he said, his expression sour. “So, go.”  
  
All Coby’s gathered breath left him in a quiet, surprised sigh. “Wh--?”  
  
Helmeppo shook his head, like he didn’t want to hear whatever it was that Coby might say. (And Coby had no idea what might come out of his mouth anyway.) “Look, there’s a hidden path in the basement; I’ll take you to it. The hounds are still mostly asleep, so you should be able to get away just fine.” Without waiting for Coby to agree or nod or show he’d even heard, he got up and led the way out into the halls, followed dutifully by Sorro, and all Coby could do was scurry after him.  
  
They were silent on their walk down to the basement, and Helmeppo didn’t keep a hand or close eye on Coby like he’d done every other time they’d left the room. It seemed he didn’t even want to look at him, his eyes locked straight ahead. Before too long, they found themselves in a dark room that looked like it had once been a store-room, wooden crates scattered around, mostly in pieces. Helmeppo turned to Coby with a barely-suppressed sigh.  
  
“It’s through here,” he said, motioning vaguely to a very small door nearly hidden behind some debris. “It comes out on the other side of the fence, so you won’t have to sneak through the yard. Just follow the shoreline of the river back up to the town.” He cast his eyes and voice both lower and he turned away. “I hope you find your parents.”  
  
“Wait!” Coby said, almost reaching out but just not quite daring. “Why are you letting me go? I thought you liked me.”  
  
Immediately, he knew that was a dumb thing to say. On top of sounding needy and immature, it was probably the best way to get his host to reconsider giving him his freedom, and as much as Coby felt a bit uneasy about suddenly being let out, being forced to stay had always been the last thing he wanted. He had a goal, after all, didn’t he?  
  
Something almost like a laugh escaped Helmeppo, though it didn’t at all sound happy. “I do like you,” he said, both looking and sounding all too weary. “So…”  
  
The oppressive silence rang loudly around them, and Coby bit his lip as he waited a moment for Helmeppo to say what was truly on his mind, hoping it was something he wanted to hear, but not knowing entirely what that might be. “So…?” he asked quietly.  
  
“So get out before I change my mind!” Helmeppo shouted, loud in the stillness of the room but with so little energy that it was clear he wasn’t really angry, and that there was probably no chance that he would actually change his mind, not even if Coby continued to needle him about it. The sound of it made Coby’s heart ache.  
  
“Okay,” he said, clear and placating but not submissive. He glanced at the small door but instead of making for it, he turned towards Helmeppo. In lieu of taking his hand, he clenched his fists, determined. “Okay. I’ll go find my parents. But afterward, I’ll come back, and think of some way to help.”  
  
The grimace on Helmeppo’s face was desperately uncomfortable. “I don’t want to hear that; it’ll just give me hope,” he said, eyebrows drawn down so low it cast his eyes into even darker shadow. “Just… go, and take care of yourself. That’ll be enough for me.”  
  
Some part of Coby wanted to argue. He opened his mouth, as if to say _something_ (because he _wanted_ to give Helmeppo hope; didn’t he deserve that?), but the despairing look on his friend’s face said it would only hurt him more, and that would do neither of them any good. So despite his instinct, he turned and went to the small door, glancing over his shoulder as he pushed through, half waiting for Helmeppo to stop him, half hoping he would follow, and wishing more than anything that he could find a solution and break the curse on this monster, because with every step Helmeppo proved he could be more than that.


	6. Chapter 6

The small door took him through a long, low tunnel, emptying out after several minutes into a dried-up riverbank. Coby scrabbled up to the edge of the levee to get his bearings. The hidden door had taken him about halfway to the town’s edge, and he could see the early-evening smoke rising in the distance. Following the river, he headed towards it.  
  
For all that he was finally now able to work towards his goal, Coby couldn’t for the life of him figure out what he ought to do once he got back to the town. As he picked his way through the weeds at the river’s edge, he tried to focus on his plan for locating his parents, but it was as if his brain had decided it was unimportant and not worth the effort. All he could think was that none of this was right, and if he left to go search for his family he would be leaving the town to the same torment it had been withstanding for far too long now, and that was to say nothing of Helmeppo, whose torment at the hands of his curse was in some ways more terrible than those he took it out upon. (There was little worse than dying, of course, and Coby’s heart still went out to the people all those skeletons had once been, be they the soldiers that tried to take back the castle, or refugees huddling in the streets when _the creature_ was hungry, but if anything ranked nearly as bad, he imagined waking up with blood on your hands, over and over, was one of those things.)  
  
Whatever he decided to do, he knew he couldn’t do it on his own. Any strength Coby had ever had, he’d only gleaned from proximity to others, and he needed strength now. To that end, he made his way through the ragged tents towards the inn, and hoped at least that he could buy some allies with his new information. As far as he knew, he was the only one who was really aware of what was actually happening in Lord Morgan’s keep.  
  
The inn was just as packed full of disheveled people and their disheartened murmurs as it had been when Coby was there last, whenever that was. He still didn’t have a very good sense of how long it had been. More than a week, he knew; less than a month, he guessed. However long it was, it was apparently long enough that the inn-keeper had decided he was a lost cause, like anyone else who’d been taken by the creature. Her eyes widened when she saw him push in through the front door with perhaps a measure more certainty than the first time.  
  
“You’re alive!” she called across the foyer, over the heads huddled there. Several of the heads turned his way, though most of them were too tired to care who had apparently returned from the dead. He nodded, bashful, and wound through the refugees who were settling down for the evening. When he came to the desk, the innkeeper reached out to brush his arm, as if she thought he might be an illusion. “How did you manage?”  
  
Coby opened his mouth, but he found that no explanation was forthcoming. He didn’t get the feeling that the truth would work, not just yet. To say that he’d been let go would imply that there was someone in the castle to _let_ him go, some human there to blame for all this misfortune. It would only raise more questions, more problems.  
  
Which meant there was no way he could ask for help from the innkeeper, or any of the other townsfolk. The situation was too personal for any of them to be forgiving of what Helmeppo and his family had done, especially as no one could stop him from continuing. If Coby wanted help, it seemed it might only come from a third party.  
  
He ignored the woman’s question and countered with his own. “Do you remember the person I was with before. Luffy. With the straw hat.”  
  
Luckily the innkeeper was willing to drop her burning question in favor of discussing Luffy. (There really was something about him, Coby thought, able to command  attention even when he wasn’t there.) “Yes, the treasure hunter. He came back with the mercenary after you left that morning. They told us you’d been captured and that they were going to report back to the mercenary’s contractor and ask for help. If they were going to Goa, I would have expected them back by now, but there’s been no sign of them. I suppose it’s not necessary anymore anyway.”  
  
If Goa was the city that kept sending their soldiers to investigate the keep, Coby _hoped_ Luffy and Zoro hadn’t gone to them for help. He didn’t imagine the city would be particularly merciful towards the creatures that had been feasting on their men. Then again, if the Goa army hadn’t retaken the castle yet, Coby didn’t see them suddenly pulling through because a mercenary lost a friend there. (And ‘friend’ was generous, given that he’d said a grand total of nothing to Zoro yet.)  
  
There wasn’t much else the innkeeper could tell him, and he refused to burden her with any information she didn’t need to know, so he left the inn and went back into the streets, wondering if perhaps he could see if any of the tent-dwellers had any idea where Luffy and Zoro had gone. At the moment, they were his only plan. The townsfolk couldn’t help Helmeppo; they were too mired in their own problems. But a monster like Luffy? Maybe he would understand. The curse he was under was benign, but it had to count for something. At very least, he wouldn’t be too scared to try, if Coby asked him to help. And Zoro… Well, he’d survived the keep once. Maybe he’d take another chance.  
  
He spent an hour or so asking around, and got very little information for his troubles. Most people didn’t want to be bothered, and anyone who answered him had very little to say. Several people had seen the two men head east in a horse-drawn wagon, but that was all anyone knew. Dismayed, Coby settled down under the porch of a general store as refugees began to bank their fires. He fell into an uneasy rest, hoping that if the creature came out tonight, he would have as much mercy on Coby as he did the first time.  
  
Though the hours passed to dawn, Coby wasn’t sure if he slept at all. He just kept thinking about how to handle the situation. Optimistically, it was brainstorming. Realistically, he was dwelling on it. There just wasn’t a way he could see it turning out-- at least, not in his or Helmeppo’s favor. Say he was to follow Luffy’s tracks and find where he and Zoro had gone. Say he was to get them to come back. What then? They were adventurers; neither of them would want to settle down and take watch over Morgan, even if the hounds let them pass, and Helmeppo wouldn’t be free of his self-made prison as long as his father needed to be watched over. The only way he could leave the castle would be if the curse lifted, and he was no longer at the mercy of the night and what it did to him.  
  
No, even then he would be stuck. Hadn’t he said his father no longer transformed back in the day? He couldn’t be let out; he was too dangerous. And Helmeppo had too much conscience to let him starve (another reason he wasn’t entirely a monster; Alvida had let Coby go hungry on more than one occasion, and the only reason she didn’t let him starve was because he was too useful to her). Would lifting the curse turn Morgan back, or was he too far gone? And if he became human, what would happen then? Would he return to lording over Shells town, or would his citizens hold him accountable for the pain they’d endured?  
  
Coby could imagine both Helmeppo and Morgan (a taller, meaner-looking version of Helmeppo, in his mind) going to trial and being found guilty, sent back to dark dungeons or even executed. He had a vision of Helmeppo being dragged away by farmers with pitchforks, struggling against them as they took him to his death, and in his desperation growing into that frightening form and tearing the throats out of every townsperson until he stood alone in the middle of the street, covered in blood. Coby wasn’t sure if it was a nightmare from a fitful bit of sleep or just another worry from his wild imagination, but it was terrible either way, and it only made him more tense.  
  
An ugly grey-brown dawn came and Coby wearily dragged himself up off the shop’s doorstep before he could get trampled. The night had brought him no clues or plans, and very little rest, but at least the hounds hadn’t come. A few times he could hear their distant howls, but it seemed Helmeppo had kept them inside the castle. Maybe it was luck, but Coby liked to think that his friend had retained enough control over himself to keep the creature and his thralls in check, at least while he knew Coby would be in town.  
  
As lost as he still felt, there was nothing for it but to pick a direction and strike out, so Coby stood and stretched and gazed out towards the road Luffy and Zoro were said to have taken. He didn’t know the way, but he had a good sense of direction and was decent enough at tracking; if he couldn’t find _them,_ at least he might find someone who understood curses and could afford him some advice.  
  
He hadn’t made it a block down the road before he noticed a commotion in the distance, the way he was headed.  
  
“More soldiers,” a nearby shopkeeper said, groaning. “You’d think they’d stop sending men to die at the castle when so few returned. I want rid of the dogs as much as anybody else, but the deaths of these men will be meaningless.”  
  
His neighbor hummed. “At least the hounds won’t bother us as much if they’ve something else to eat. And maybe they’ll leave their horses so _we’ll_ have something to eat.”  
  
Coby considered warning the soldiers off, though he doubted they would listen to him. Even so, they were drawing closer so he cast his eyes about for their leader. Instead he found a head of hair in a shade of green that was only a little familiar to him, but recognizable all the same, and riding the horse beside him a figure in a red shirt who he knew immediately was Luffy.  
  
“Luffy!” he called, running to meet them. He wasn’t sure if he was surprised or relieved or worried, but he didn’t think he ever wouldn’t be glad to see the young man who’d saved his life.  
  
“Coby?” Luffy cocked his head to the side with an exaggerated frown. “How did you get out?”  
  
“Uh.” Coby grimaced, staring up at him. “It’s complicated. But, you were really coming back to rescue me?”  
  
With his usual wide grin, Luffy said, “Yeah, of course! Well, kinda. Zoro’s boss came to deal with the dogs.”  
  
It was then that Coby noticed the man riding along on the other side of Zoro, looking severe and yet bored. His cold yellow eyes lit up a bit as he saw Coby trotting awkwardly beside their entourage. “A friend of yours, Zoro?” he asked, never taking his eyes off Coby.  
  
“This is the kid we were coming to rescue,” Zoro explained, a short huff of laughter escaping him.  
  
“Is that so?” Zoro’s boss slowed his horse to amble at a pace Coby could better keep up with, and the rest of the army followed suit. He fixed his piercing gaze even harder on Coby, a hint of a smirk to it. “So you escaped on your own. I was told the beast that calls the keep its home was quite savage. How did you manage what so many others have not?”  
  
Coby balked at the question. What could he say in response to that? It had nothing to do with his own ability, his strength or cunning, such as they were. He wasn’t even entirely sure himself why Helmeppo had spared him when all evidence implied he’d eviscerated every soldier who strayed too near. Perhaps it was just that he didn’t seem a threat, too small and pink and scared to look like anything more than a pup.  
  
“It’s… not a beast,” he said, imploring them to understand though he wasn’t sure quite how to explain. “It’s… All the dogs in the castle, they’re under some kind of curse.”  
  
The man’s smirk deepened. “I know of this curse. But I didn’t expect a _child_ to know of it, when there should be no one left to tell the tale.”  
  
Coby rankled at being called a child by this man with his callous glare, but only until the implication of his words hit him. “You…” He clenched his fists. “ _You_ put the curse on them?”  
  
Laughing, Zoro’s boss gave a slight nod of his head that was both yes and no. “It was a more complicated matter than you seem to think, young one. Regardless, the situation wasn’t expected to go on this long, and I’ve come to rectify it.”  
  
It was pretty obvious that the man didn’t mean he was going to remove the curse, and a shiver went down Coby’s spine to think of how else he might handle it. Not with a gentle hand, he could be sure. The sword strapped to the man’s back was massive, and it seemed more than likely he had practice with it.  
  
“No,” Coby murmurmed, staring up at the man, glancing between him and the two he thought of as friends. “No! Wait! The hounds… I know they’re not innocent, but they didn’t mean to hurt anyone. They’re being controlled!”    
  
“By a master who has escaped the fate he brought upon himself with his war-mongering?” The General raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Worry not. They’ll all be laid to rest soon.”  
  
“No, it’s--!”  
  
But whatever Coby might have said would be lost anyway beneath the stomping of hooves as the army continued on its way, wending down the road toward the keep. The General didn’t cast another glance in Coby’s direction, and he stumbled back hurriedly to avoid being jostled by the riders. At least Luffy and Zoro detached themselves from the detachment of soldiers, coming to stand beside him. They gave him curious looks, confused as to how he was so drastically exceeding their expectations of him being imprisoned, or perhaps dead.  
  
Coby sighed and worried his lip, watching the soldiers plod on. Unless they were planning to stop for breakfast, he didn’t have much time. He looked up at his companions; Luffy joined him on the ground (Coby didn’t get the feeling he was fond of riding), though Zoro stayed mounted.  
  
“Is there no way you can stop them?” he asked, doubtful but desperate.  
  
Luffy shook his head. “Why d’you want them to stop anyway? I thought you wanted to help the townspeople.”  
  
“I do! But…” Coby glanced around, as if hoping a concise explanation was posted on a sign somewhere. “They, they’re not _evil._ It’s a curse! Helmeppo told me someone cursed his family to become monsters years ago and they can’t control themselves so it’s not really their fault! And that man must have been the one to curse them and now he’s going to finish them off because it didn’t kill everyone the first time! But Helmeppo shouldn’t be held accountable for his father’s mistakes! I can’t let him die.”  
  
Zoro’s expression was a little hard to read, with how little Coby knew him, but Luffy appeared skeptical. “Mm, I don’t really understand,” he said, his head cocked to the side. “But there’s a person in there you wanna save?”  
  
“Yes!” Coby shouted, relief flooding him.  
  
“Must be the guy who’s controlling all the dogs,” Zoro said. “I didn’t see anyone when I was there, but now that I think of it, dogs aren’t usually great at stringing people up on walls.”  
  
“No!” Coby protested, before admitting, “Well, yes, but… He’s not doing it on purpose.” He supposed hanging Zoro up in the main hall had to have been on purpose, at least to some degree, but he wanted to at least give Helmeppo a chance to be forgiven for his ugly, ill-tempered decisions, instead of killed before anyone could hear his reasoning.  
  
Luckily it didn’t seem that Zoro held too much of a grudge; maybe that was why he was getting along with Luffy so well. He grunted. “I won’t stand in your way, then. But I don’t care whose dogs they are or whose fault it is; if any of them attack me or the townsfolk, I’m cutting them down.”  
  
“...That’s fair,” Coby said, as much as he wished he could avoid bloodshed altogether. “I won’t ask you not to fight, but maybe you could distract your general just long enough for me to warn Helmeppo? I might be able to get him to surrender or something, but it won’t be fair if the soldiers catch him off guard, and he won’t go down without a fight either.”  
  
“Sure,” Luffy said, like he didn’t really mind one way or the other except that Coby was asking, while at the same time Zoro smirked and said, “There’s no fun in an unfair fight anyway.”  
  
Thanking them profusely, and promising to help see this situation through as peacefully as he could, Coby ran off back toward the castle, weaving in and out of busy civilians and avoiding soldiers, lest the general have decided he wanted another word with him, or to stop him from doing exactly what he was planning. The man’s hawklike eyes had seemed just too keen, and Coby didn’t doubt he had an idea what was really going on.  
  
He hurried along the embankment of the dried out river until he came upon the tunnel again, and the little rusting gate that was set into it, and hurried then down the tunnel path. The tunnel had felt magic the night before, like it was impossibly both too long and too short; now it just felt mundanely too long. Helmeppo wasn’t there to greet him when he reached the stony little dungeon room at the end; of course he wasn’t. Coby would have greatly prefered to have the young man there to guide him through the dangers of the castle, but he prided himself on his sense of direction so at least he was fairly sure he wouldn’t get lost back on the way to Helmeppo’s room.  
  
Finding his way was not a problem. The hounds, luckily, proved not to be a problem either. Although Coby could hear them snuffling in the corners of larger rooms he passed, they all seemed to be settling in for the day, and none came to investigate his footsteps or smell (even though he was sure he reeked of fear and stale nervous sweat). The problem arose when he arrived at the door to Helmeppo’s room; the heavy lock was disengaged, but there was nobody inside. Helmeppo either hadn’t returned from the night, or he’d gone back out again, and he’d taken Sorro with him.  
  
Coby was at a loss. He paced the room, glancing around like he might find clues. Why wasn’t Helmeppo here? He’d always come back before this time of morning-- though Coby belatedly realized it was probably only to bring him breakfast. Maybe his schedule had differed wildly before Coby had come into his life.  
  
Hanging his head, Coby groaned in frustration. He didn’t have time for this. _They_ didn’t have time for this.  
  
Something incongruous caught his eye by the bed. He’d become used to seeing the swords sitting there, but now that he’d met their owner again he was reminded that they weren’t simply a set-piece. Although he hadn’t dared touch them since that one night (he hadn’t wanted to; they felt far too dangerous, and not because of the sharp edges), Coby approached them now, and took the small white one in hand. He hadn’t really held it before, but it felt… powerful; more so than a piece of sharpened steel ought to. (Though, admittedly, Coby had zero experience with swords, and it was possibly just the adrenaline that made him feel that way.)  
  
He took the sword with him, just in case, as he went back out into the hall, after several tense moments of pacing. It didn’t take long for him to decide he couldn’t just wait for Helmeppo to return. Sneaking through the corridors with steps as light as he could manage, Coby took himself to the library, hoping maybe his former host had opted for some light reading. But that room was quiet and empty, as were the rest of the rooms he visited until he came upon the master bedroom. Something told him he ought to have checked there first, but as he pushed the door open so very slowly and peeked his head inside, he wished he hadn’t had to.  
  
There was nothing terrible about the scene; rather, it was endearing. But the sight of Helmeppo and Sorro curled up tight together in the center of the huge bed was something Coby didn’t feel he had the right to witness, let alone when there was danger on the horizon.  
  
Helmeppo looked so… innocent, so small, and even more so when Sorro poked his head up from the crumpled comforter to zone in on Coby through the semi-darkness. He wagged his tail, smacking Helmeppo’s side with it, and Coby took it as some sort of permission to come forward.  
  
“Helmeppo,” he whispered, when he got close enough. (It was close enough to pet Sorro, which he did, but not quite close enough for the young man to swipe at him if he was spooked out of a bad dream or something. He’d learned.) “Please wake up. You’re in danger.”  
  
Groggy, Helmeppo groaned and blinked open his heavy eyes, staring at Coby for a few long unseeing moments, and then shaking his head when full awareness washed over him. He frowned. “This isn’t a dream. What the hell are you doing back here? Don’t tell me you found your parents so fast.”  
  
“No,” Coby admitted, cringing. “I came back to warn you. There’s an army approaching. They mean to kill you and your father and all the hounds.”  
  
“Eh, let them try.” Helmeppo yawned, seemingly unconcerned. “This isn’t the first time soldiers have showed up, and it won’t be the last. The hounds can handle it. And don’t give me flack about attacking innocent people; soldiers are different.”  
  
Coby shook his head, clutching the blanket in frustration as he leaned closer. “It’s not just soldiers. They have a general with them. I think he’s the one who cursed your family, and… I think he’s back to finish the job.”  
  
Sitting up suddenly, Helmeppo’s eyes went wide. “Finish the job?” he asked with a scowl. “How much more complete can a curse _get?”_  
  
Biting his lip, Coby said in a strained tone that wanted both to be a whisper and a shout, “I don’t think you were supposed to survive.”  
  
Rage shuttered Helmeppo’s expression, and Coby was sure the man was going to lash out or yell (not at him, he thought; just in general), but the explosive anger calmed enough for him to take a breath. “Well we did,” he replied, each word measured and forced to calm. “Let the bastard come and see.”  
  
Despair trickled cold down Coby’s spine. “Don’t fight them! I came to warn you so you could escape.”  
  
“Tch. If escape was possible, I would’ve gone years ago.” Helmeppo let out half a sigh, glaring into the distance as if at his enemies. “ _You know,_ defending this place is the only option I have left. And I’m sure as hell not going to let some sorcerer take what little I have left.”  
  
With hardly another glance at Coby, Helmeppo (followed by Sorro) got up from the bed and began to stalk out the door, toward the front of the castle, where the rumbling of the hounds could already be heard as they sensed the scent of the soldiers. The structure of Helmeppo’s face began to shift just a little, his eyes gleaming if not glowing, his fingertips sharpening to claws. It should have been frightening, but Coby didn’t think he could be frightened of the man anymore. Now he was just frightened _for_ him, and for the soldiers who might get in his way.  
  
It seemed Helmeppo knew he was heading into dangerous territory. “Stay back, if you don’t want to get hurt,” he said over his shoulder as he marched down the corridor and Coby scurried after him. “Lock yourself in one of the rooms.”  
  
“No, Helmeppo, please,” Coby pleaded. “Why don’t we just leave? You could get the dogs together and run, off into the forest somewhere. ...I’ll go with you!”  
  
Sadness peeking through the steely resolve, Helmeppo shook his head. “They won’t follow me,” he said. “And I won’t leave them to be slaughtered.” He didn’t wait to see that Coby understood before breaking into a run and turning down a hallway towards the sounds of human yells and canine growls that had begun to clash. Coby took off after him, but he was neither as fast nor as familiar with the castle’s labyrinthine passages, and he lost sight of Sorro’s tail after only two turns.  
  
Still gripping the sword, he hurried along in the direction of the sound, until he came upon the first scattered groups of combatants and had to skirt around them and hope he wasn’t noticed. The hounds were focused on the soldiers, the smell of oiled steel and leather a potent red flag; the soldiers didn’t think to fight a fellow human, so even without armor Coby was able to pass as an ally. He hoped Helmeppo would be given the same leeway, though he doubted the man would stay so human in the face of such a threat.  
  
He wasn’t sure what he was planning; when he found Helmeppo again, what would he do? Why was he risking himself when Helmeppo had already said he wasn’t going to leave? It was little better than suicide, and sure Coby cared about Helmeppo, but he didn’t want to _die_ beside him, not at the hands of soldiers and crazed hounds. He supposed he was hoping in vain that he could… drag Helmeppo away? Or maybe that his presence would somehow save him from harm?  
  
The fighting had spread to every hall and room on the ground floor of the castle, but it wasn’t hard to find who he was looking for; the human yells and screams were concentrated in the main hall, where Coby had first seen Helmeppo-- and it was no surprise to find that he had returned to his beastly form. The massive dirty-blonde wolf was throwing down soldiers left-and-right. Coby was glad to see that blood was not yet marring the coarse fur of his snout or paws; perhaps because he still had the daylight control over himself, Helmeppo was holding back from ripping the soldiers apart. The soldiers were not being so generous though, and he had gained a few wounds to his sides and shoulders, though they weren’t stopping him.  
  
“Helmeppo!” Coby called across the hall, as he stumbled towards him over freshly-fallen bodies and much older corpses. It wasn’t a clever move, but he was really starting to think he wasn’t all that clever of a person after all, and maybe that was something he was just going to have to deal with.  
  
Whether his shout caught Helmeppo’s attention or not, he wasn’t sure; he was distracted not half a moment later by a soldier whirling on him, and the man’s sword coming down across his face in a blaze of sharp pain.  
  
“Shit,” he heard the man say, though he couldn’t see through the blood in his eyes. “You’re not--...”  
  
He couldn’t finish his sentence, even if he knew what he was going to say, as Helmeppo was instantly upon him, one giant paw knocking the air out of his chest and pinning him to the ground. He let loose a roar in the soldier’s face, and Coby was able to wipe the blood from his eyes just in time to see Helmeppo rearing back for a bite.  
  
Heedless of his own safety (now wasn’t that just today in general?), Coby leapt forward and wrapped his arms around Helmeppo’s thick, furred neck, tugging him away from the soldier. “Don’t!” he yelled, half plea, half pant, pulling with all his meager strength, wrestling the giant beast out of range of the soldier, who already was only half-conscious on the grand hall’s stone floor.  
  
With a surprisingly human awareness in his eyes, Helmeppo turned to Coby and gave him what he thought functioned as a frown before licking a wide stripe up his face, over the gash in his forehead.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Coby said, wiping his face off on his sleeve. “I know you said you wouldn’t leave the dogs, but I couldn’t just wait and watch you get hurt. I thought… between the two of us, maybe we could figure _something_ out!”  
  
Helmeppo blinked heavily at him, and for all that Coby was not adept at reading the expressions of wolves, he thought it looked like Helmeppo was considering his words, really finally thinking that there was some merit to it. Maybe he hadn’t expected Coby to be crazy enough to run after him and get himself injured; maybe he was tired of the fight. He let out a sigh and looked around the hall, as if wondering where to start between all the ongoing battles. He couldn’t tell the hounds to stand down, any more than Coby could tell the soldiers to relent.  
  
They couldn’t stand there for much longer before they started drawing attention, and Coby was just about to drag Helmeppo off to _somewhere safe,_ when an eerie howl rang out from the distance. It wasn’t loud, clearly echoing from somewhere deeper in the castle, but Helmeppo’s ears perked up immediately and he went even more tense than he’d been before. He whined a high-pitched noise that went low into a growl, and Coby only just managed to get a good grip in the thick fur of his neck as the wolf’s muscles bunched up, before he sprang into action. With a swiftness that exceeded every previous dash and lunge, he took them across the hall and into the maze of corridors before Coby could even blink.  
  
“What was that?” he tried to ask, as he clinged for dear life to the massive beast and they tore through the castle towards a destination that at least Helmeppo seemed sure of. Of course he didn’t answer Coby; even if he could, he was too focussed on the echoes of the noise and the pads of his paws dragging them closer to it.  
  
Coby didn’t know what he expected. His mind was a blur, like the stone walls and torn tapestries they passed, sounds of fighting growing distant as they dove deeper into the lower levels of the castle, towards the dungeons but further and further until there was no light but for the faintest of flickers of torchlight up ahead.  
  
They skidded to a stop rather suddenly, after bowling past a line of soldiers crowded in a circle, and Coby fell to the ground, his arms shaking with the effort of holding on so tight. Ringed by the soldiers, the hawk-eyed general stood at the very edge of a bright puddle of blood, and Coby shuddered to look upon the creature who lay dead in the center of it. The truly massive wolf could only be Lord Morgan. He was twice Helmeppo’s size, and looked absolutely wretched, fur matted and scarred and now covered in blood. Several soldiers were crumpled on the ground, nursing bloody gouges, but by the way the general’s giant sword dripped, it seemed he’d protected his underlings from too much harm.  
  
Helmeppo’s form faded back to human as he stumbled toward Morgan, heedless of the pooling blood when he fell to his knees and sunk his hands into the wolf’s fur. “Father…” he gasped, his jaw trembling. Coby could see when he realized there was no pulse, how his eyes went wide and blank before he turned to the general in shock and outrage and growled inhumanly.  
  
The general wasn’t frightened. He hummed, staring not at Helmeppo, but at Morgan. “Dead, and yet the curse remains. Interesting.” It was only then that he acknowledged Helmeppo, cocking his head curiously at him. “Is it you, then? The new bearer of the curse?”  
  
“I remember you,” Helmeppo growled, low under his breath. “You were with that delegation, the sorcerer, the night before everything happened.”  
  
Scoffing, the general said, “Don’t look at me like that. Your father’s crimes were more numerous than you may know, and he had to answer for them. It’s regrettable that the rest of your family got caught up in a curse that should have belonged solely to him. However, that is in the past. And _now,_ before me stands the end of that curse. Forgive me for what I must do.”  
  
Coby hardly had time to digest what the man said, what he _meant,_ before the general was pulling back his blood-drenched sword for one last strike.  
  
If he was half a second faster, Coby would have saved Helmeppo; he would have taken the full force of the general’s blade. Instead the deadly sharp steel sliced into Helmeppo where he still sat by his father’s body, and Coby caught only the tip of it across his forehead, criss-crossing the wound he’d gotten earlier. From the look on the general’s face, he’d tried to pull back when he noticed Coby rushing forward, but even someone as skilled as he must be couldn’t stop a sword already so heavily in motion. Coby fell with a pained shriek, feeling the echo of the blade’s rasp against his skull, but he pushed it from his mind and spun around to check his friend.  
  
“Helmeppo!” he cried, tears of both pain and worry welling up and spilling out from his eyes, clouding his vision even further. His hands searched and grabbed on to Helmeppo’s shoulders, but he couldn’t tell if he was okay; he could hardly see that the man’s eyes were closed-- as if in a faint, or in death.  
  
He was aware that the general was standing behind him, still in shock, and the soldiers were closing in around them in concern (as if their emotions finally worked, now that there was a human involved, and not just a family of monsters). But Coby ignored them. The whole world could have been coming down around him; in fact, maybe it was. He couldn’t tell if Helmeppo was breathing, even as he leaned close, ear to his bloody chest. Coby’s own heart was beating too hard and loud in his own ears, drowning out all other sound.  
  
“Please be okay, please,” he murmured, trailing off into incomprehensible mutterings as he continued to feel along Helmeppo’s shoulders, his neck, his face, fingers combing into his hair and tangling in it, more as a lifeline than anything else. He leaned his head down and pressed his face against Helmeppo’s, mouth whispering soundlessly until he pressed into Helmeppo’s lips in what might have been a kiss or an ignorant, stunted attempt at resuscitation.  
  
He didn’t notice that some time during his litany of murmurs the soldiers began to look around in surprise; he didn’t notice the general’s approving hum and then the very quiet gasp that followed a few moments later. He didn’t notice that Sorro had caught up with them and was now hovering at his elbow, whining softly. The only thing Coby noticed, when finally the very long moment had passed, was Helmeppo’s sharp intake of breath, and the wet rasp as he tried to breathe around the pain and blood. He wasn’t fully aware that Helmeppo wasn’t dead until he reached up and grasped Coby’s shoulder, shaking him out of his numbness.  
  
“You…” Coby thought Helmeppo tried to say, but the simple word or whatever sentence it might have been was lost in a racking cough.  
  
“Oh thank goodness,” Coby gasped, tugging him closer.  
  
They might have sat there like that and caught their breaths for a few precious moments, but the general spoke up, cutting off the soldiers’ wondrous murmurs. “How lucky for you,” he said, and the smirk was evident in his voice, even though Coby hadn’t taken his eyes off Helmeppo to look at him. “I expected your life would have to be forfeit to end the curse, but it seems your friend has found another way.”  
  
Helmeppo was still struggling to breathe, so he didn’t respond; Coby found that while normally he would leave well enough alone, in this case he was ready and willing to answer for him.  
  
“I can’t claim to understand everything that has happened here, but your job is done, right? So you’ll leave him alone now?” He bothered to glance at the general, just to make sure that he’d heard him.  
  
“As long as he doesn’t repeat his father’s mistakes, I have no quarrel with him or his ilk,” the general said. Turning away slightly, he pulled a scarf from inside his coat and wiped his sword clean before sheathing it behind him. Regarding Coby and Helmeppo once more, he looked down his nose at them in a way that was neither disdainful nor exactly pitying. He did seem a bit sorry still, as he said, “My men will see to Morgan’s body. The new lord should rest, before he must face his people.”  
  
_Rest?!,_ Coby thought of asking, as it really seemed that what Helmeppo needed was a surgeon, but the way Helmeppo groaned in response was more annoyed than pained, and when Coby looked close he could see that the young man was no longer bleeding quite so freely. He wasn’t going to prod, but the wound appeared to be closing already, and Coby sighed in great relief to realize that Helmeppo was not going to spend the foreseeable future on death’s doorstep.  
  
The general left then (and Coby couldn’t say he minded, even if the man was no longer intent on their murder), but apparently bid several of his soldiers assist them on their way back up to the ground floor of the castle. Luckily, Helmeppo didn’t need more than a shoulder to lean on, and Coby was happy to be that for him, so the soldiers were little more than an honor guard. He half suspected they might be jailers until they left them at the door to Helmeppo’s room, and went back to their other business.  
  
The walk had been strange. A pallor seemed to have lifted from the castle. Perhaps it was only that it was suddenly full of the sounds of people mumbling and groaning in confusion over their sudden transformations and not just the quiet whisper of sleeping hounds, or maybe it was the fact that the place was no longer a prison to all of its inhabitants. It could have simply been the warmth and weight of Helmeppo’s arm slung around his shoulders. Whatever the reason, Coby found he could breathe easier than he had in perhaps years.  
  
Back in Helmeppo’s room, the strangeness of the situation faded, leaving only a comfortable relief. Helmeppo disengaged from Coby, trailing his hand along Coby’s arm in silent thanks, and then staggered over to the bed and collapsed. He took a few moments to struggle out of the more blood-stained of his clothes before wiggling half-under the blankets and rolling just far enough away to leave room for another. When Sorro jumped up and cuddled in on his _other_ side, Helmeppo patted the space he’d made and said weakly, his eyes already closed, “come on,” and then fell almost immediately to sleep.  
  
Coby sighed and then nodded, though to who he wasn’t sure, and made his way over to the bed, shucking ruined clothing as he went. It was early in the afternoon still, and he hadn’t been up more than a few hours yet, but a rest sounded very appealing. Beside that, there was no way he was leaving Helmeppo’s side just yet. It was something he would have to consider (among very many other things) only after he’d had some sleep.


	7. Epilogue

It took about three days for Helmeppo to be almost entirely healed, except for the soft pink line down his abdomen that he was sure would scar despite his regenerative capabilities. As evidenced by Morgan’s death, it didn’t guard against all wounds.  
  
He took the death of his father admirably well; Coby had worried he’d be torn up about it, after all his worrying the weeks before, but it was apparently more of a relief than anything. It wasn’t that he didn’t mourn; he spent time every day at the giant grave that Mihawk’s soldiers had dug for his beastly form, sitting quietly and looking morose, or sometimes talking softly to the mound of fresh dirt that didn’t yet have a headstone. But it was something that had been on Helmeppo’s mind for so long, something he’d feared and expected for years, so it seemed to have lost some of the despair it would have carried otherwise.  
  
“My father was a bastard,” he admitted wryly one evening, over the quiet dinner he and Coby took between endless bouts of planning and fixing. “In the last few years before everything went to hell, he… changed. I didn’t care to pay attention to court politics, but he became power-hungry. Even without knowing he was waging wars on neighboring cities, I could tell things were different. I’m not surprised someone decided to take him down. I’m just surprised it took this long.”  
  
Coby didn’t have a lot of opinions about Morgan’s fate, but he was sure there should have been some way to have removed him from power without destroying his whole family. He was still frustrated about it the next time he happened upon General Mihawk (who was staying for a while to oversee Shells’ return to normal), and he said as much, though the man simply shook his head, as detachedly amused as ever.  
  
“I had my orders,” he said. “The government is not known for its subtlety or restraint.” He would say no more on the matter, and Coby refrained from asking. As displeased as he was with how the situation had been handled, he didn’t really feel the need to know the full intention of the shadowy organization that had ordered it. Mihawk’s promise that Shells and its lord would be safe _‘should he resist following in his father’s footsteps’_ was enough, as Coby was rather sure Helmeppo would do everything in his power not to go down that path.  
  
In fact, he was already making a concerted effort to fix the mistakes which had not begun as his own but which he’d taken full responsibility for. He made no effort to hide his grouching (which was only half genuine, a disgruntled lord persona he put on), but he did what he could to set things to rights.  
  
The first step was seeing to all the men and women that had spent years as vicious hounds. Most of them didn’t remember much detail about the past few years. Some didn’t remember their pasts _beyond_ that. Now that the curse had been broken, they were simple werewolves-- as simple as werewolves could be. They could turn from human to hound as they pleased, and seemed to mostly retain their senses in the shift. They were still thralls, Helmeppo claimed, not as powerful as a true bloodborne werewolf, but they were no longer under the direct control of the alpha, and were therefore no longer obligated to stay.  
  
A surprising number of them stayed anyway. Some had been servants or guards to the family since long before the chaos began, and were happy to go back to their previous job. Some were apparently enemy soldiers who’d been bitten by Morgan during the initial fight and changed sides not of their own accord, but who had gained an affinity for the castle and their fellow hounds over the years and decided to stay. Some, of course, went home to their own cities, to families who thought them long-lost. Some who had lived in Shells their whole life decided to start over elsewhere.  
  
Coby did what he could to help in the clean-up efforts as well, quick to suggest that they focus their efforts on the town, hoping to restore some semblance of normality to the citizens’ lives, and maybe return a small amount of what faith they’d had in the lord's family before everything had happened. The townsfolk were curious about the sudden change, but also distrustful, as if they knew they weren’t being given an entirely true answer.  
  
“I don’t want to lie to them,” Helmeppo said, furrowing his brow as he hoped to think of some way to make it all work. “But if I tell them the truth about… the beast, I doubt they’ll let me stay on as lord. Then the government would send someone else and- I don’t trust them.”  
  
Coby tried to be supportive. “It’s your story to tell,” he said, patting Helmeppo’s shoulder and letting his hand linger there. (He knew they both liked it, too devoid of positive touch for too long before.) “But maybe they’ll forgive you.”  
  
Helmeppo scoffed. “I killed so many of them.” He didn’t elaborate then about how he’d slaughtered indiscriminately, and dragged his prey back to feed his caged father, and become so numb to it that towards the end he’d hardly been bothered by the taste of blood lingering on his tongue in the mornings. That was a story he would tell Coby another time. “Would _you_ forgive me?”  
  
That wasn’t a question Coby could answer, and they both knew it. He shook his head sadly and said, “You can feel bad about it, but you have to move on too. You’re repenting, aren’t you?”  
  
And he was, of course. The curse no longer held any sway over him; the nights no longer took him hostage. It had been frightening for both of them, that first night. As evening came, Helmeppo had tried to quit the room where they were still resting, in his habit to keep Coby safe. But Coby had reached out and pulled on his arm, dragging him back down to the bed.  
  
“Where are you going?” he asked, though he knew exactly.  
  
Helmeppo paused. “What if… if it’s still there?”  
  
Coby didn’t release his arm, his thumb stroking along Helmeppo’s wrist, in half a nervous tick, half a comforting gesture. “Why would everyone else be back to normal except you?”  
  
Expression falling closed, shuttered and sad but still available to Coby, if only him, Helmeppo muttered quietly, “I don’t deserve to be freed.”  
  
“You don’t deserve a lot of what happened to you,” Coby said. He trembled slightly, too affected by Helmeppo’s emotions. “But you deserve a second chance.”  
  
Helmeppo ran his free hand through his long hair, sighing. After a short moment, he gave in and settled back down next to Coby, coming just close enough that it might be called a snuggle. “I definitely don’t deserve _you.”_  
  
Coby knew better than to disagree with him any more than he had already. He could only win so many arguments at once. “Well I’m here anyway,” he said, shifting his grip down to tangle his fingers with Helmeppo’s.  
  
It was a tense evening, always wondering if he might shift at any moment, if the curse had in fact just changed its rules instead of disappearing for good. But Coby held on to Helmeppo, and Helmeppo permitted himself to be held, both choosing to trust that things could be alright again. And as they’d desperately hoped, the wolf stayed dormant all night. The angry, hungry, lonely spirit that had nightly consumed him was gone.  
  
It felt only right to Coby that he should stay like that each night that followed, to be an anchoring presence to Helmeppo’s otherwise anxious nature about the night-time. And, more selfishly, he found he didn’t want to part from Helmeppo’s side, now that nothing was restraining either of them. It was a place he had become comfortable, made all the warmer when one night Helmeppo clutched him to his chest in a fit of emotion and vehemently thanked him, for everything. Coby had thought of deflecting the praise, until Helmeppo’s nose rubbed against his own and their lips met in a kiss that was only slightly more gentle than the impassioned embrace.  
  
Helmeppo didn’t ask him to stay, but he made it very clear that Coby was more than welcome. The castle’s repairs were slow-going, with most of their efforts focused on the town (and that was fine, everyone agreed; the keep had been in shambles for years. What was another few months?), but he made sure that Coby had a room of his own, should he ever decide he wanted a moment alone, and that everyone knew he was to be given no less respect than the lord himself. It wasn’t exactly common knowledge, how much of a part in their rescue Coby had played, but the guards and servants and soldiers loaned from Mihawk mostly got the gist of his importance, if not in general then at least in regards to Helmeppo, and they treated him accordingly. (It wasn’t hard to like Coby, anyway, as there was scarcely anyone more devoted to cheerfully helping out around the keep and the town.)  
  
After the initial reform was underway, Coby spent much of each day in the town, organizing the efforts to get refugees settled more permanently, and pitching in where he could (and where he was allowed; the townsfolk had started to realize that he was somewhat in charge and responsible for the positive changes happening, and tried to convince him he needn’t get his hands dirty, as if he were some sort of lord himself who had never known hard work. He laughed with them and ignored their efforts to keep him from hauling lumbar). But each evening he returned to the castle, to reunite with Helmeppo and trade stories about their work of the day, over a dinner that was modest but usually more interesting than apples and bread.  
  
Luffy and Zoro stayed the first week, before heading off to sate Luffy’s endless desire for adventure.  
  
“Looks like you’ve got everything handled,” Luffy said approvingly, hands on his hips as he inspected the great hall, which had been cleared of all evidence of hound-- except for a few napping werewolves, who still prefered to sleep in their familiar corners.  
  
“We’re trying,” Coby told him, proud of the efforts everyone was putting in. The place looked and smelled practically new already (relatively speaking), and the town was on its way to thriving.  
  
Zoro gave him a look that wasn’t quite a glare; apparently he just looked like that. “Hey. Did anyone happen to find my swords?”  
  
Coby flushed and ran off to retrieve them, thinking it probably didn’t need mentioning that he’d considered trying to kill Helmeppo with one of them. The secret could die between them, as long as the swords weren’t magically able to speak to their true master or anything like that. They definitely suited Zoro much better than they had suited Coby, or been suited as decorations. (Helmeppo was a little annoyed to have to give them back. “I was thinking of learning swordsmanship,” he said with a slight pout. Coby suggested they could find him his own sword, something more unique to his style, and not stolen, and he acquiesced willingly enough.)  
  
Part of Coby wanted Luffy to stay. The strange monster of a young man was one of his first real friends, after all. But of course Luffy had his own goals in life, and Coby had to accept that he was lucky their paths had crossed at all.  
  
“Maybe I’ll see you around some time,” Luffy said, as he and Zoro readied to depart. “I’ll come back after I find Roger’s treasure, and we can have a feast or something!”  
  
“Of course,” Coby said, laughing and hoping his soft sadness was hidden behind the smile.  
  
Luffy waved goodbye and he and Zoro hopped up on their horses. “Oh yeah, good luck finding your parents,” he called over his shoulder before they galloped off.  
  
He hadn’t forgotten. Every day he spent in the town, Coby kept an eye out for them, wondering and hoping that he might find them there among the refugees or the settled townsfolk. And he did intend to continue his search for them-- but it simply wasn’t a priority at the moment. There was so much work to be done, in the town, at the keep, repairing buildings and lives and relationships. It was nothing he had expected, but he had a purpose here in Shells; he had people who needed him.  
  
Even so, he never once pretended to Helmeppo that he wouldn’t leave to continue his search once things had stabilized in the town. Given his own issues with his family, how much he wished he could have said goodbye to them or apologized for all his childish misdeeds, it was clear that he understood. Coby may have loved it there in Shells; he may have loved living in the castle; maybe he even loved being with Helmeppo. But he couldn’t give up on his family when there was still a chance they were out there waiting for him.  
  
So it was that an anxiousness rose up in Coby. The better the town and castle got, the further along repairs went, the less he was strictly needed to oversee things, the more he felt both excitement and dread. He wanted to go find his parents, most certainly. ...But he didn’t want to leave. Change was strange and difficult, and he knew it wasn’t always entirely in one’s own control what happened to them. Suppose he left to continue his search and circumstances forbade him from returning? Suppose he was left both without his family and without the new life he’d found with Helmeppo? Was it not perhaps less risky to simply accept how things were and leave aside with the searching?  
  
There was no way he could do that, to abandon his goal. Not even if Helmeppo asked him. Not even if they crowned him _king_ of this town. He had an obligation to his parents, and to himself, to see this through.  
  
It was good then, that Helmeppo did not ask him to stop searching. Coby knew he would have hated to refuse. He practiced in his mind his little speech, much like the impromptu one he gave when leaving the keep the first time. He wanted to promise he’d return as soon as he could, smile and kiss Helmeppo and hope that was enough to make the man wait for him. He _wanted_ to ask him to go with him, but he knew that was too selfish and he wouldn’t dare.  
  
It was a stroke of luck, and a payoff of Helmeppo’s efforts, that Coby never had to give that painful speech.  
  
On an evening like any other, he returned home. ‘Home’, to the castle, to Helmeppo and the guards and servants who had come to like and respect him and look to him for guidance. He returned home with his heart again a margin heavier than it had been the night before, knowing that some time soon he would have to say goodbye, that he couldn’t delay his search much longer lest he give in to inaction. Helmeppo wasn’t in the grand hall with the other wolves, as he could most often be found in the evenings. Coby asked a passing hound if they knew where the man was, and the dog sniffed the air before reverting to human form and relating that he was in the one receiving room they’d cleaned up, in the corridor that ran along behind the hall.  
  
Did they have visitors?, Coby wondered. Dignitaries from neighboring countries? He hoped if there was discussion to be had that it would be quick and reasonable, that the politicians or whoever they might be would not try to take advantage of Shells and its lord in their new fragile state.  
  
The room was, at the moment, one of the nicest in the castle, the walls having been repapered and the rugs repaired or replaced. Someone had even found a few matching arm-chairs that were not in disrepair, giving at least this one room an appearance of composure. It was lit well enough, but the lamps had been dimmed in accordance with the late hour, casting the room in a cozy glow.  
  
Two people sat facing away from the door, while Helmeppo sat across from them, looking every bit the lord in a clean laundered outfit of spring greens and browns and the occasional accent of gold. It even seemed like he’d brushed his hair back away from his face, half into a sort of low tail. When he caught notice of Coby, there seemed an undeniable glint in his eye.  
  
The lord hadn’t had to do more than look over his guests’ shoulders before they quickly followed suit and turned to see who had just walked in, as if they were expecting him. And Coby blamed it on the dimness of the room, not the several long years, that he didn’t immediately recognize the tear-drawn faces of his mother and father.  
  
In a few moments more, he wouldn’t be able to see past his own tears, but the way they hugged him close was familiar enough that he didn’t need to see. Their voices too were just as he remembered, if rough with crying just the way his likely was.  
  
“I had some people out looking for them,” Helmeppo said sheepishly, as he stood to the side of their pile, watching with an expression only one part bitter to ten parts sweet.  
  
“Thank you,” Coby muttered through the tears. He couldn’t find any better words to express how profoundly relieved he was, but at least he knew now he would have the time to think of them.  
  
The crying subsided eventually, and Helmeppo called for dinner to be brought to the room so they could talk all they needed to, without passing out from hunger. Coby explained much of what had happened to him (though not _quite_ everything, not the bits he didn’t feel were his to tell), then listened as his parents told their own tale of their lives during the time in which he’d been away. There was much pain in both stories, but it didn’t bother the tellers; the hard times were over now. Whatever struggles they faced in the future, they could face them together, as a family.  
  
Helmeppo seemed to hold his tongue through all of this, and it was only after Coby and his parents had talked for a good several hours into the night and the two new guests had been put up in Coby’s unused room that he asked the taciturn lord _why._    
  
“Does it remind you too much of your own family?” he asked, still sorry for everything Helmeppo had had to go through, but not enough that he wasn’t in ecstacy.  
  
“What? Oh, no. I wasn’t really thinking of them at all,” he admitted, glancing at Coby as they walked down the mostly-dark and mostly-quiet halls back to Helmeppo’s room-- _their_ room, as they tended to think about it, after the month or so spent together.  
  
Coby hummed. “So why did you look like you’ve been chewing on bitter apple seeds all evening? Did you… not like my parents?”  
  
Helmeppo looked aghast at the accusation. “That’s definitely not it! They seemed nice, really.” He swallowed and looked away, a sure sign that he didn’t want to have to admit what was about to come out of his mouth. “I just… You know, I’ve liked having you here. I’m sure you can understand that I’m not really looking forward to you moving back in with your family. It might be selfish, but I’d rather have you stay.”  
  
At that, Coby couldn’t help himself but grin. “The town’s hardly a ten minute walk. You can’t wait ten minutes to see me in the morning?”  
  
The pout Helmeppo gave him was comical. “Of course I can! It’s just… I… don’t want to go back to spending nights alone.”  
  
It was so rare that Helmeppo spoke openly about his feelings; he disliked making himself vulnerable. It made Coby pause in the corridor and stare up at the young man. “Me neither,” he said, smiling wide. “I felt kind of bad that I never used the room you gave me.”  
  
“If you don’t want it, you know your parents could keep it,” Helmeppo said hopefully, hooking a few fingers into Coby’s. “I’d be happy for them to stay-- as long as they don’t mind dogs.”  
  
Coby feigned a moment of deep thought. “Well we never had any when I was a kid, but I don’t see why they wouldn’t like them. They’ve grown on _me.”_  
  
Of course there was a difference between a simple hound and a monster who wore the guise of a wolf when convenient, and living among shapeshifters would be a taller order to adjust to. But Coby had faith that Helmeppo would prove himself, if given the chance, and that his parents would be among the first to learn what Coby had learned months ago: you can’t judge a monster by their shape, or by their power, or by the curse that befalls them. You judge them by their actions, and how they handle second chances. You judge them no more or less than a human.  
  
You judge them with compassion, or you don’t judge them at all.  
  
“You’ve grown on _them,”_ Helmeppo muttered, mollified. He tugged Coby forward and continued on towards their room. “If you moved away, I think half the hounds would follow you. You’re not secretly some kind of witch, are you?”  
  
“I don’t _think_ I am,” Coby said, laughing. “I guess I just have a way with... people like you.”  
  
Helmeppo scoffed cheerfully. “Like me _what?_ Dogs? Handsome bastards? Terrifying beasts?”  
  
“Sure,” Coby said, declining to specify. He wrapped their hands tighter together and continued down the corridor, comforted by the sounds of life echoing from adjacent halls. He wasn’t sure any of those things _quite_ described Helmeppo anymore, but he’d let him have them until he’d settled into a new identity. If all went well (and it seemed it might), they could create it together: a new way for him to think of himself, a new way of monsters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahh thank god, _finally_. It's so nice to have this done, after sitting on it for two years.  
> Thanks very much to anyone who has given it a read; please tell me what you think! I may try to write for myself, but sharing it is at least half the fun, and I always hope someone has enjoyed it at least half as much as I have.  
> <3


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